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Recruiting and NFL Draft Results

BrucePa

Well-Known Member
Sep 23, 2001
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Going to 11
Question for the AKB, how does NFL draft performance play into each school's recruiting pitches? We know that elite high school talent want to attend schools where the chance of getting to the NFL is provably high, and where academic requirements are, let's just say, not very demanding.

Alabama can claim 11 players going to the NFL, with 6 going in the 1st round. Ohio State had 14 players going to the NFL, with Justin Fields going in the 1st round.

Penn State had 6 draftees, plus Lamont Wade to the Steelers, and with 2 1st round picks.

Was Penn State helped by this draft as far as recruiting is concerned, or are they an also-ran?
 
PSU tied for 8th in the number drafted, tied with KY and Pitt. However, we had two first rounds and a second round. If you sat down and did the math, I'll be the draft ends up being pretty aligned with recruiting scores. Clemson had an off year but the big boys, the ones contending, were all there: AL, GA, tOSU, ND, FL, Michigan, LSU....and a MAJOR discrepancy between the SEC and the second-best conference (65 to 44).

2021 NFL Draft by conference​

  • SEC -- 65
  • Big Ten -- 44
  • ACC -- 42
  • Pac-12 -- 28
  • Big 12 -- 22
  • AAC -- 19
  • Independent -- 15
  • Conference USA -- 5
  • FCS -- 5
  • MAC -- 4
  • Mountain West -- 3
  • Sun Belt -- 3
  • Divisions II/III -- 4

2021 NFL Draft by college team​

 
To answer the original question about whether it plays into recruiting pitches........absolutely it does.

If you're a high-level WR, it's hard to say no to Alabama the way they've produced 1st round WRs. Ditto for OL at Alabama. Or DBs or pass rushers at Ohio State. Or QBs at Oklahoma.

For a while, PSU was drawing RB interest because of Barkley and Sanders' success. They may still be doing so.

Now, does some 5* WR need Nick Saban to get him to the league? Does some 5* DE need Larry Johnson at Ohio State to get him to the league? No. But when there's an established pipeline of kids at a certain position to the NFL -- particularly high in the draft -- then the recruiting pitch becomes incredibly easy.


Now......how does this year impact PSU? Getting 6 kids drafted is a plus. Not sure the trio of kids drafted in the back half of the 7th round moves the recruiting needle much, but having a pair of 1st rounders can't hurt.
 
I saw a stat that 7 members of Alabama’s 2017 recruiting class were 1st round NFL draft selections. That may be the best recruiting class of all time in terms of production.
 
Helps, but as Mark wrote not to the degree of Bama, Clemson, or OSU.
 
Question for the AKB, how does NFL draft performance play into each school's recruiting pitches? We know that elite high school talent want to attend schools where the chance of getting to the NFL is provably high, and where academic requirements are, let's just say, not very demanding.

Alabama can claim 11 players going to the NFL, with 6 going in the 1st round. Ohio State had 14 players going to the NFL, with Justin Fields going in the 1st round.

Penn State had 6 draftees, plus Lamont Wade to the Steelers, and with 2 1st round picks.

Was Penn State helped by this draft as far as recruiting is concerned, or are they an also-ran?
I read somewhere this weekend that Saban just broke Joe's record for producing number one draft picks at one university.
 
I saw a stat that 7 members of Alabama’s 2017 recruiting class were 1st round NFL draft selections. That may be the best recruiting class of all time in terms of production.
Saint Ignatius, a high school here in CLE, used to have a perennially ranked football team (suffered the last two years). I know boys that never started, played special teams and got scholarship offers to secondary teams. This is where Alabama is right now. They are simply head and shoulders of any team with the only real exception being Clemson. Then you have another tier that is in the same zip code in GA, OK and tOSU. Then you have the next layer in Michigan, PSU, LSU, FL.....

With free agency hitting college football, I don't know if it will make a difference. i can see a kid sitting behind a Waddle and Smith. But I can see others xfering in from lesser schools who may have had a good fr season at Temple or TTech and xfering to AL.

And just as I googled that, I got this headline:

 
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I agree. Pretty lame. If it were a skein of first rounders it would be more impressive. By stretching the metric, PSU is trying too hard.

The Marketing team always tries to stretch the metric to funnel in on a very small group of schools that includes Penn State. It's unbecoming and peevish for a program of our stature candidly. "One of 3 schools with a feline type mascot, that has Blue as a primary color, and has been to middling bowl games in the last 20 years, *with the exception of 2003 & 2004.
 
The Marketing team always tries to stretch the metric to funnel in on a very small group of schools that includes Penn State. It's unbecoming and peevish for a program of our stature candidly. "One of 3 schools with a feline type mascot, that has Blue as a primary color, and has been to middling bowl games in the last 20 years, *with the exception of 2003 & 2004.

Can't remember where I saw it, but I saw a team's social media claim something like "one of only 4 teams to score 18+ points in 30 straight games!". Seemed like such a bizarre metric. Who uses 18 points as a measuring stick?

This isn't as bad, but they do seem to do exactly what you wrote. Like the infamous Super Bowl claim.

No real harm comes of it, but they are trying a bit too hard sometimes.
 
The Marketing team always tries to stretch the metric to funnel in on a very small group of schools that includes Penn State. It's unbecoming and peevish for a program of our stature candidly. "One of 3 schools with a feline type mascot, that has Blue as a primary color, and has been to middling bowl games in the last 20 years, *with the exception of 2003 & 2004.

Can't remember where I saw it, but I saw a team's social media claim something like "one of only 4 teams to score 18+ points in 30 straight games!". Seemed like such a bizarre metric. Who uses 18 points as a measuring stick?

This isn't as bad, but they do seem to do exactly what you wrote. Like the infamous Super Bowl claim.

No real harm comes of it, but they are trying a bit too hard sometimes.

The University does similar things (just ask BobPSU92 😇). My favorite is the annual "PSU is the only university in the Top 10 of x-number of research categories." Wonder if they're co-ordinated. It's unseemly.
 
Saint Ignatius, a high school here in CLE, used to have a perennially ranked football team (suffered the last two years). I know boys that never started, played special teams and got scholarship offers to secondary teams. This is where Alabama is right now. They are simply head and shoulders of any team with the only real exception being Clemson. Then you have another tier that is in the same zip code in GA, OK and tOSU. Then you have the next layer in Michigan, PSU, LSU, FL.....

With free agency hitting college football, I don't know if it will make a difference. i can see a kid sitting behind a Waddle and Smith. But I can see others xfering in from lesser schools who may have had a good fr season at Temple or TTech and xfering to AL.

And just as I googled that, I got this headline:

You are right. Alabama has the same status in football recruiting that PSU has in wrestling recruiting. Neither has to recruit that hard; they simply select.
 
I saw a stat that 7 members of Alabama’s 2017 recruiting class were 1st round NFL draft selections. That may be the best recruiting class of all time in terms of production.
Also, over the past 5 years I think ~40% of Bama recruits have been drafted. That's hard to beat
 
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