The 10 best and 10 worst college football programs at developing talent
Which college football programs are the best at developing recruits and turning them into NFL players and which programs are the worst? You’ll be surprised.
College football coaches wear many hats – recruiter, offensive and defensive strategist, motivator, in-game adjustor and player developer, among others.
Player and team rankings provide data on who is snaring the best recruits.
And game statistics, along with wins and losses, provide endless reams of data for judging offensive and defensive schemes and in-game adjustments.
But where is the hard evidence to show which head coaches and college programs are the best at developing players – at taking the raw material of a high school football player and molding it into someone worthy of being drafted into the NFL? There is none.
Until now.
Using statistics released by the NCAA earlier this year showing which programs have produced the most NFL draft picks since 2000, combined with an analysis of recruiting data that covers the same period offers a measuring stick to determine which schools are simply good at bringing in the best high school stars and which consistently polish the diamonds in the rough into jewels that become NFL draftees.
The method: Start by ranking the raw material that coaches start with by compiling the consolidated recruiting rankings for the years 2000 to 2017. (I modified a dataset of 247Sports recruiting rankings for 2002-2018 published in 2018 by SBNation.)
Then line those rankings up with the rankings of each college program based on the number of players drafted in the NFL from 2013 to 2020. (Those years are chosen because under NFL draft rules college players must be at least three years out of high school before they are eligible for the draft.)
A positive number means a school ranks higher in its NFL draftees than the quality of its recruits – in other words, the players grew in value while in college.
Using this method, three schools jump out as the best builders of football talent.
The top three are the Iowa Hawkeyes, Utah Utes and Wisconsin Badgers.
Iowa had a talent-building score of 26 with its recruiting classes ranked at 40th for the years 2000 to 2017, but its number of 62 players drafted from 2003 to 2020 tied for 14th with Wisconsin.
Utah also scored a 26 with a recruiting ranking of 54th and a draft ranking of 28th. And Wisconsin scored a 21 with a recruiting ranking of 35th and a draft ranking of 14th.
Other programs with double-digit scores for talent development included Louisville (15), TCU (13), Boston College (12), Purdue (11) and North Carolina State and Oregon State both at 10.
On the negative side, the lowest talent development scores go to Arizona and Oklahoma St. which both earned a -20. Other earning negative double-digit scores were Mississippi St. (-14), Kentucky (-13), Texas and Texas A&M (-12), Washington (-11), with Mississippi, Tennessee and Maryland all at -10.
Examples of Iowa’s success in developing players can be found in the 2019 and 2020 drafts. In 2019, the Hawkeyes saw two tight ends drafted in the first round. Noah Fant was just the 536th overall player in the recruiting class of 2015, while T.J. Hockenson did not even receive an individual ranking by 247Sports.
In 2020, Tristan Wirfs, now starting at tackle for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was the 10th Iowa player drafted in the first round since 2003. He was ranked as the 331st player in the 2017 recruiting class.
How is it that Iowa, Utah and Wisconsin of all schools, stand out as doing such a good job of developing players?
One reason Iowa has had success in developing players is a strength and conditioning program that is considered one of the best in the country. Besides Wirfs, Iowa has had 17 offensive linemen taken in the draft since 2003, including four others selected in the first round.
Another reason for the success of all three is stability in their programs.
Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz is the dean of college football coaches, having started in 1999. And before him, Hayden Fry was Iowa’s head coach from 1979-1998. That’s two head coaches over more than four decades.
Kyle Whittingham has coached the Utes since 2005 and ranks fifth in coaching seniority. Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst has only been in Madison since 2015, but Barry Alvarez, who resurrected Badger football as head coach from 1990-2005, has provided a firm hand as athletic director. Alvarez served as interim head coach during the two coaching changes that preceded Chryst’s hiring.
The average number of head coaches since 2003 by the teams who were the worst in player development was five, while the average number of head coaches for those with the best player development scores was three.
One interesting sidelight is the strong link between the Iowa and Wisconsin programs, which goes far beyond being border states which are both in the Big Ten. And there’s also a coaching connection between Wisconsin and Utah.
Alvarez was an Iowa high school coach when he was selected for his first job in college by Fry, who two years later hired Ferentz as his offensive line coach. Alvarez’s first successor was Bret Bielema, who played at Iowa.
In addition, Gary Andersen was a longtime assistant at Utah before being chosen as head coach of Wisconsin. He left there and eventually returned to Utah for a year.
Like Iowa, Wisconsin has gained a reputation for developing outstanding offensive linemen. Also like Iowa, none of the eight Wisconsin players drafted in the past two years was an elite recruit and five did not even warrant a national recruiting rating by 247Sports, which ranks hundreds of players.
And of the 12 players from Utah taken in the last two drafts, only two had recruiting rankings inside the top 100 players.
Besides the instability that frequent coaching changes create, another explanation for the poor player development scores may have to do with a bias regarding the quality of recruits from different parts of the country.
Here is the thinking: Five of the 10 teams with the worst scores are from the Southeastern Conference, which is universally seen as the best conference in college football.
But maybe the recruits themselves are simply overrated and it’s a lack of talent and not poor player development that reduces the numbers that get drafted.
Conversely, two of the three most highly rated programs as far as developing players are from the Midwest and the Big Ten. And the third is Utah who is often overlooked.
So maybe those recruits are simply undervalued.
There are plenty of other possible explanations and angles and isn’t that what makes sports fandom fun?
Best and worst developers of college football talent
These scores represent the improvement (or decline) in rankings for college football teams when their recruiting class rankings for 2000-2017 are compared to their ranking for the total number of players drafted in the NFL from 2003-2020.
The best:
- Iowa: 26
- Utah: 25
- Wisconsin: 21
- Louisville: 15
- TCU: 13
- Boston College: 12
- Purdue: 11
- Oregon St: 10
- North Carolina State: 10
- Oregon State: 10
The worst:
- Arizona: -20
- Oklahoma St.: -20
- Mississippi St.: -14
- Kentucky: -13
- Texas A&M: -12
- Texas: -12
- Washington: -11
- Maryland: -10
- Mississippi: -10
- Tennessee: -10
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