CREDIT: Gawker Media / Deadspin.com / Sam Wooley
News to nobody who is familiar with college football, the Cincinnati Bearcats perform beyond the level of recruits they bring in. The folks at Deadspin.com compiled this awesome chart to see which FBS teams over the past five seasons are the best at outperforming expectations, and which teams squander good recruiting classes.
As you may have guessed, you don’t want to be in the red side. And if you are, you definitely better be near the very top right corner. Teams like Ohio State, Florida State, and USC haven’t quite met these calculated expectations over the past five years, but are still winning lots of games. Teams like Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, Kansas, and Colorado are falling flat on the field, despite recruiting classes that rival some of the better teams in college football. Teams like Memphis, Akron, and Eastern Michigan are bad at recruiting and even worse at winning. Yikes.
On the other hand, there are a few tiers of overachievers. Boise State, Northern Illinois, and Navy make up the top tier. Navy isn’t winning a ton of games, but they’re winning a lot more than they should based on their caliber of recruits. The second tier includes teams like Oregon, Wisconsin, BYU, and Air Force, as well as the Bearcats.
Looking vertically on the chart, Cincinnati has been recruiting at the same level as Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Iowa State, and Duke, yet has been far more successful on the field. Bearcat fans already knew this. No more apparent is this massive gap between recruiting and winning than in 2009. The Bearcats logged the 84th best recruiting class, and finished at #7 in the BCS rankings.
Deadspin compiled a table that aggregates the recruiting rankings and the BCS rankings. The Bearcats clock in at +28, good for #9 in the FBS. Navy (+57.4) is at the top, with Kansas (-48.9) at the bottom.
Check out Deadspin’s post for some more in-depth analysis on all FBS teams.