Which School Do Prospects Consider "DBU"?

ESPN.com's Tom VanHaaren published an interesting study ($) about which college programs prospects believe are the best at developing players at each position over the last 10 years.

All of us are comfortable calling Virginia Tech "DBU", and Torrian Gray's unit's play on the field and NFL pedigree has earned Tech as good of a claim to the title as any other school. So naturally the results of ESPN.com's survey piqued my curiosity. Do prospects feel like we do? Ultimately their opinion probably matters the most as they're the next generation of talent Beamer Co. is trying to sell Virginia Tech to.

Recruit perception: LSU gets the nod as DBU with recruits across the country. Alabama was the second most mentioned program, followed by Virginia Tech and Ohio State, but LSU was consistently talked about among the recruits surveyed. Tyrann Mathieu and Patrick Peterson were singled out as examples of why prospects were naming LSU as the best place for defensive backs. It's tough to blame them, as the Tigers have had a lot of success developing this position group.

Recruit's take: "My top three would be LSU, Alabama and Virginia Tech."

While the Hokies aren't the consensus top program, Virginia Tech's success isn't going unnoticed. That's a good thing.

I found it interesting the time range ESPN.com asked recruits to consider was 10 years. Coaches develop players, and few, position or otherwise, have been at the same school over the last 10 years. Additionally, I'm sure the kids surveyed had something better to pay attention to when they were 6, 7, 8, ... years old.

To educate myself, I took a look at the defensive backs each of the three schools have had drafted from 2010-2014. I think the last 5 years provides a good sampling of data, and more recently drafted players resonate more with today's high schoolers. I used Rivals.com ratings because the 247Composite isn't available for all the players drafted.

Alabama has developed 9 prospects into NFL draft picks, LSU 7, and Virginia Tech 6. However, this data doesn't consider the busts, just the total. Knowing the ratio of defensive backs signed to those drafted would be a more compelling statistic. The Hokies have had one first round pick, while the Crimson Tide and Tigers have had 5 and 3, respectively. Although, the average Rivals.com stars for Tech is 3 (I considered Grimm an outlier and he wasn't included, 2.5 otherwise), 4 for LSU, and 4.11 for Alabama. It could be argued Tech is developing its players best because they weren't as highly regarding coming out of high school, yet they're getting drafted. Alabama's drafted DBs spent an average of 3.22 years in college while, LSU 3.28, and Tech 4.2 (again sans Grimm). This stat lends itself to the notion that the players Alabama and LSU sign are more NFL ready coming out of high school, and require less college development. Or Saban's and Miles' staffs are so good at what they do, they only need 3-4 years of coaching.

In my experience talking with prospects, the end results like draft success, and post-season accolades are more important than the circumstances of the journey.

Researching this data has enlightened some. I've learned in addition to Tech, other schools have had great success developing defensive backs into draft picks. But at the end of the day, I'm going to continue calling Virginia Tech "DBU" without hesitation.