I think most people here agree that recruiting is one of, if not the, major hurdle that our program has been unable to overcome in the past 10-20 years. This has been attributed to a variety of reasons - not enough donations, not enough winning, challenges with the location, etc. A couple days ago in one of the coaching threads, outoftowner5 made this comment:
Again, it's not just a budget thing. We need to make better staffing decisions, and get wiser with the money we have.
I never thought that the problem wasn't who we could afford to hire, but how we were spending the money we had. Since I just finished finals, I decided to spend a couple hours putting this data together. My goal was to determine:
- Is our staff underachieving in recruiting given their salary?
- Of our recruiting rivals, who is getting the most 'bang for the buck?'
This spreadsheet contains all the data I will reference throughout this entire piece.
Methodology:
I wanted to compare Virginia Tech's staff to other 'geographic recruiting rivals.' Given that our recruiting footprint is roughly anywhere on the east coast between Atlanta and Pennsylvania, I included 14 P5 school that are either located within or frequently recruit this area:
- Clemson
- Duke
- Georgia
- Georgia Tech
- NC State
- UNC
- Wake Forest
- Pitt
- Penn State
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Maryland
- UVA
- WVU
All information on salary and staff is from this recently posted USA Today article. I think it's mostly up to date with the latest coaching changes (UNC and UMD staffs looked correct), but I may have overlooked something.
Next, I needed a way to figure out how well each assistant at each of these 15 teams (14 rivals + VT) recruits. To do this, I used 247's Coach Composite Rankings. I decided that I would rank each assistant coach on these 15 teams by calculating their 3-year average 247 Recruiting Point total for years 2015-2017. I figured a 3 year average would be a small enough sample that only relevant data would be included, but also large enough that any unusual data points would be obvious. I chose 2015-2017 because I wanted the results to be based on recruits who signed an LOI, not commitments.
Disclaimer/Assumptions/Callouts:
Some things to keep in mind while reading below comments on any trends I noticed, or when forming your own conclusions:
- Obviously, this is a somewhat crude analysis that doesn't account for or normalize staff changes, depth chart, school recruiting resources, etc. I literally just found the staff and salary information for all assistants at these 15 schools, and matched that up with each coach's 3 year recruiting history (regardless of what school they were at).
- The private/semi-private schools on this list (PSU, Pitt, Duke, Wake) do not disclose (much) salary information, so this analysis is somewhat incomplete.
- There are many instances of a coach having 0 recruiting points for a given year - that means that 247 didn't rank the coach in their Composite Coach Rankings for that year. There could be a number of reason why this happened (coach didn't land any (noteworthy) recruits, coach was in a non-recruiting role that year, coach was a headcoach that year, coach was in between jobs, etc). Obviously, this data skews my findings. I'm open to recalculating based on some other method if someone has a suggestion (and they're willing to redo the tables for me, b/c that part was a pain in the ass!)
- This analysis attributes all results to the 'lead recruiter' (who typically is NOT a head coach)
- This analysis obviously doesn't factor in on the field coaching skills, it purely focuses on recruiting results from 2015-2017.
Who are the best recruiters at our geographic rivals?
These are the top 20 recruiters (of these 15 schools) from 2015-2017:
3 Year Coach Composite Ranking | School | Coach | 2018 Base Salary ($) | 3 Year Coach Composite Points Avg |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Clemson | Brent Venables | 2200000 | 66.41 |
2 | Clemson | Jeff Scott | 850000 | 65.59 |
3 | UNC | Tommy Thigpen | 405000 | 63.9 |
4 | Tennessee | Chris Rumph | 805000 | 62.69 |
5 | Tennessee | Kevin Sherrer | 705000 | 62.11 |
6 | UNC | Robert Gillespie | 382000 | 60.13 |
7 | Georgia | Sam Pittman | 825000 | 60.12 |
8 | Georgia | James Coley | 850000 | 56.92 |
9 | South Carolina | Travaris Robinson | 1200000 | 56.59 |
10 | Penn State | Terry M. Smith | N/A | 55.95 |
11 | Georgia | Scott Fountain | 300000 | 54.32 |
12 | Tennessee | Tracy Rocker | 505000 | 54.03 |
13 | South Carolina | Bryan McClendon | 650000 | 52.21 |
14 | Tennessee | Charles Kelly | 330000 | 51.46 |
15 | WVU | Joe Wickline | 501000 | 50.36 |
16 | UNC | Chris Kapilovic | 450000 | 49.71 |
17 | Clemson | Tony Elliott | 875000 | 47.92 |
18 | Duke | Derek Jones | N/A | 47.48 |
19 | Penn State | Sean Spencer | N/A | 47.28 |
20 | VT | Zohn Burden | 280000 | 47.04 |
Here is each school ranked based on the 3 year performance of their current staff:
(please note that individuals currently on the staff may not have been their three years ago).
School | 3 Year Coach Composite Points School Avg |
---|---|
Georgia | 39.97 |
UNC | 29.19 |
Tennessee | 29.14 |
Penn State | 28.41 |
Clemson | 28.08 |
South Carolina | 25.54 |
VT | 24.43 |
Pitt | 23.97 |
Duke | 22.64 |
WVU | 18.91 |
NC State | 17.66 |
UMD | 16.65 |
Georgia Tech | 11.45 |
Wake Forest | 10.13 |
UVA | 9.22 |
And here is how each school is trending from 2015-2017 based on the performance of their current staff:
(again, please note that individuals currently on the staff may not have been their three years ago).
School | 3 Year Trend |
---|---|
Georgia | 107.12 |
Pitt | 49.83 |
VT | 48.73 |
South Carolina | 41.79 |
UMD | 37.11 |
Tennessee | 20.44 |
Duke | 17.74 |
NC State | 9.31 |
Georgia Tech | 8.57 |
WVU | 7.73 |
UVA | -6.85 |
Penn State | -7.69 |
UNC | -28.83 |
Clemson | -30.30 |
Wake Forest | -42.30 |
Which recruiters offer the 'bang for the buck' to their school?
These are the Top 20 'value' recruiters from (of these 15 schools) from 2015-2017:
3 Year Coach Composite Ranking | School | Coach | 2018 Base Salary ($) | 3 Year Coach Composite Points Avg | Price per Recruiting Point ($/point) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
11 | Georgia | Scott Fountain | 300000 | 54.32 | 5522 |
20 | VT | Zohn Burden | 280000 | 47.04 | 5952 |
30 | UMD | Aazaar Abdul-Rahim | 250000 | 41.35 | 6046 |
25 | VT | Charley Wiles | 280000 | 45.4 | 6167 |
52 | UVA | Marques Hagans | 175000 | 27.61 | 6338 |
3 | UNC | Tommy Thigpen | 405000 | 63.9 | 6338 |
6 | UNC | Robert Gillespie | 382000 | 60.13 | 6353 |
14 | Tennessee | Charles Kelly | 330000 | 51.46 | 6413 |
32 | UNC | Deke Adams | 300000 | 40.24 | 7455 |
28 | NC State | Des Kitchings | 324480 | 42.93 | 7558 |
57 | NC State | Ted Roof | 200000 | 25.61 | 7809 |
42 | WVU | Matt Caponi | 251000 | 30.96 | 8107 |
36 | Georgia | Glenn Schumann | 325000 | 37.82 | 8593 |
16 | UNC | Chris Kapilovic | 450000 | 49.71 | 9053 |
70 | UNC | Keith Heckendorf | 195000 | 21.3 | 9153 |
46 | VT | Brian Mitchell | 280000 | 30.14 | 9291 |
47 | VT | Holmon Wiggins | 280000 | 30.01 | 9329 |
12 | Tennessee | Tracy Rocker | 505000 | 54.03 | 9346 |
43 | Georgia Tech | Andy McCollum | 296089 | 30.8 | 9613 |
15 | WVU | Joe Wickline | 501000 | 50.36 | 9949 |
And here is each school ranked based on overall staff value:
School | 3 Year Average Coach Composite Ranking for School | Recruiting Points per $100000 |
---|---|---|
UNC | 63.00 | 8.50 |
VT | 66.80 | 7.56 |
Georgia | 36.80 | 7.40 |
Tennessee | 65.90 | 5.49 |
NC State | 83.40 | 5.47 |
UMD | 89.20 | 5.24 |
WVU | 82.70 | 5.15 |
South Carolina | 68.40 | 4.74 |
Georgia Tech | 100.00 | 3.99 |
Clemson | 69.30 | 3.72 |
UVA | 105.20 | 3.33 |
Duke | 73.50 | N/A |
Penn State | 63.00 | N/A |
Pitt | 65.80 | N/A |
Wake Forest | 104.18 | N/A |
Answering My Questions
- Is our staff underachieving in recruiting given their salary?
I think we're achieving as expected given our coaches' salaries, as compared to our geographic rivals. Of the rival schools providing salary data, VT is getting the second best recruiting bang for the buck. Again, Pitt and PSU do not report salary data, and I wouldn't be surprised if they both ranked above us. Whatever the case, I think we can confidently say that VT is in the top third in terms of 'bang for the buck' compared to our geographic recruiting rivals.
Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that VT has middle of the pack in terms of quality of recruiter (ignore each recruiter's cost). If we want to spin this somewhat optimistically, we could note that the 2015 signing class is really bringing down our numbers, and we are trending up faster than all but two other schools (UGA, who is killing it, and Pitt, who is trending pretty similar to VT). This could be explained by the fact that a lot of the current staff was either at Memphis (G5 school, thus more difficult to recruit at), or at VT dealing with negative recruiting around Beamer's inevitable retirement. That said, a lot of schools on this list probably have an off year for similar reasons, so I imagine that it all comes out in the wash.
Looking at a couple of individual achievements...
- Zohn (#2 overall in this measure!!!) and Wiles both place in the top 5 of most cost effective assistants among our recruiting rivals who report salary information, with Mitchell and Wiggins also in the top 25.
- In the thread focusing on UMD hires, there was talk about why we haven't poached Aazaar Abdul-Rahim from UMD and bring him to Blacksburg - I can only speculate and share rumors regarding why, but it's clear that AAR can recruit. He's the #3 coach overall in terms of value, and that's including the 2015 season where 247 gave him zero recruiting points. If we remove that year, he jumps to #6 overall and #1 for the value.
- Foster's recruiting is particularly of interest, and has really improved from 2015-2017. In 2017, he was the 81st best recruiter among our geographic rivals' current staff. In 2017, he was 23rd. As I said previously, this can be attributed to a lot of things - I'm sure it was tough recruiting kids to VT at the Beamer era, but I'm also wondering if he got 'lucky' in 2017; meaning that there just happened to be a handful of high profile recruits in his region that year.
- Of our recruiting rivals, who is getting the most 'bang for the buck?'
UNC's staff is scary from a recruiting standpoint. They have two top-10 recruiters, both of whom are also in the top 10 in bang for the buck. They have 5 total coaches who are top 20 value recruiters. That said, some of their staff's recruiting success might be from recruiting at 'name brand' schools like Tennessee, Texas, etc, and it is to be determined if they can recruit at a similar level at UNC. It will be interesting to see how much of their recruiting success is due to the school's brand versus their individual talent as a recruiter. My guess - these guys will improve UNC's recruiting class, and be a major annoyance for VT, but won't land top 10 classes. There's just too much competition in this part of the country.
Also worth noting that these measures tell us that Clemson is overpaying their coaches based on how they recruit (but that's another debate).
EDIT #1:
Here's info for the VT coaching staff, ordered by each coach's 'value':
3 Year Coach Composite Ranking | School | Coach | 2018 Base Salary | 3 Year Coach Composite Points Avg | Price per Recruiting point | Recruiting Points per $100000 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
20 | VT | Zohn Burden | $280,000 | 47.04 | $5,952 | 16.8 |
25 | VT | Charley Wiles | $280,000 | 45.4 | $6,167 | 16.21 |
46 | VT | Brian Mitchell | $280,000 | 30.14 | $9,291 | 10.76 |
47 | VT | Holmon Wiggins | $280,000 | 30.01 | $9,329 | 10.72 |
79 | VT | Vance Vice | $280,000 | 19.06 | $14,690 | 6.81 |
51 | VT | James Shibest | $445,000 | 28.18 | $15,793 | 6.33 |
111 | VT | Tyrone Nix | $200,000 | 6.59 | $30,334 | 3.3 |
44 | VT | Bud Foster | $975,000 | 30.6 | $31,866 | 3.14 |
110 | VT | Brad Cornelsen | $490,000 | 7.33 | $66,879 | 1.5 |
135 | VT | Adam Lechtenberg | $175,000 | 0 | N/A | 0 |
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