Update for 2020 from Bud Elliott: Link
For those unaware, Bluechip ratio is the percentage of 4-5 stars players on a team. No team has won a natty in the 'modern' era of CFB (since the inception of the BCS) without a 50% bluechip ratio.
Put simply, to win the national championship, college football teams need to sign more four- and five-star recruits (aka "Blue Chips") than two- and three-star players over the previous four recruiting classes.
Another relevant quote:
This is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. It does not guarantee a national championship, but a team not meeting it is almost certainly guaranteed not to win it all.
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In light of our recent recruiting struggles (either holding on to blue chippers or just getting them to commit in the first place), this is getting really depressing.
I wonder if the Transfer Portal will change this analysis, too soon right now.
If a school with the appeal, location and the resources of USCw is only at 50%, I don't have any delusions of us ever reaching this level.
They've been bumbling around for what feels like a decade now. If a school like UW can get to 54%, I see no reason we can't approach it. And as he says in the article, someone is bound to change that streak. I think Oregon was around 40ish% with Mariota and almost won in 2014.
Definitely think we can do it, but will take a special coach. Not clear yet, but probably needs to be someone besides fuente.
With that being said, I also think Washington is more designed to attract better recruits. They're a upper level football option on the west coast. Lest saturated market to recruit against too
Washington also has a NC trophy.
TwoFour of them I think.Don't get me wrong, I love Blacksburg. But, if I had the choice of Seattle or Blacksburg to spend my college years as a football player. I'm pretty sure there is built in perks in Seattle.
Rains all the time in Seattle. And their downtown has been taken over by some scary Chaz thing.
Wrong. Source- I have lived in Seattle for 7 years. I loved Blacksburg, but there is much more widespread appeal to 18-22 year olds here than in SWVA
I have visited Seattle, and given a choice, I'd pick Blacksburg.
In fact, I did have a choice, and I did pick Blacksburg.
I looked up the rain figures:
On average, Seattle gets 38 inches of rain over 156 days throughout the year
In Blacksburg, Virginia, during the entire year, the rain falls for 130.1 days and collects up to 40.9"
Given those choices, Blacksburg 100% of the time.
Oh heck no! To each their own, so I totally respect your position, but for me, heck no! One-by-one, most of my family had migrated out to the Seattle area at 1 point. First time I visited was for mom's birthday. Arrived (I think) on a Friday evening and it was mostly sunny. Sun went down that night. I did not see the sun again and it did not stop drizzling until several days later when we went up into the mountains and got above the rain line. Don't think it was actually sunny the entire week.
Add in too crowded in the city, lots of traffic on the few major arteries, and the cost of living ... Blacksburg 100% of the time for me.
One thing Seattle does have for me is the large Asian population as I am definitely attracted to that group (and not just because of physical attractiveness).
EDIT: I should point out that it actually does not "rain" very much in Seattle. It is just this almost continual drizzle and mist. If you look at the actual rainfall amounts, places like Philadelphia are much higher and Blacksburg is higher too. It is just that in Philadelphia and Blacksburg, you get actual rain that, you know, actually stops once in a while.
Ummm, it's called Chaz now...
I think you need an once in a generation (or at least once in decade) QB, and a killer defense to win if your team is below 50%. The '99 Hokies had the formula to do it.
The other is option is you have a game plan/scheme that is so light years above everyone else. Maybe onside kicks every play, or having plays like the philly-philly be a part of base offense, or some new rule that your team is built perfectly to take advantage of, or something else that I can't think of.
Regardless, it ain't gonna be easy to buck that trend.
Totally agree. You need elite talent at the right positions, like an elite QB, elite DT and o-line. Basically money ball it so that you're elite at the most important spots and then just good enough everywhere else. 99 VT team had it, some of the earlier Oregon teams, it's a rare combo but you have to put key pieces together and then hope like heck it all breaks your way.
Damn, I knew uga got cruits, but second only to bama! They are getting some talent
That was one of Mark Richt's weakness. He had no problem getting the blue chips to Athens but has problem getting them to behave. I guess fans got tired of Richt hitting the Alabama wall they wanted him gone and Richt probably felt the same about the fans as well.
So there are 15 teams that have had a blue-chip ratio above 50% in the last four years of recruiting, but only 3 teams have actually won titles in that span. Meaning that only 20% of the 11.5% (15 of the 130 total FBS schools) have won titles. I know this is an area we have declined in, and is an interesting metric to consider our current future - but it also proves that winning a national title is really fucking hard. Only 6 teams in the last 10 years have won a title (BCR doesn't really go back that far depending on the rating service).
I wish we were one of those blue chip teams, but I don't think we've ever been on a rolling four-year recruiting cycle basis.
I said this in another thread, but Alabama/Clemson's joint dominance is skewing the numbers. The last time we saw two teams this dominant at the same time was from '87-'92 Miami and FSU BOTH finished top 3.
That's a good point. Miami and FSU seem to have controlled the narrative for most of the 90s until the turn of the millennium, and the wheels fell off the wagons.
To further your point, of the teams listen above, only 7 of them have made the CFP, so yeah it's really really tough to win a national championship!
Think about Ohio State. They have been to the playoffs and got run off by Clemson, in one game got annihilated mercilessly.
Ohio State has no problem getting talents but to go deep in the playoff, they haven't been able to do that.
My question was "What is our percentage then?", so I ran through the last 4 years at 247.
2020: 0/15
2019: 7/23
2018: 7/26
2017: 5/26
Total: 19/90 = 21%
I did this in about 3 minutes and literally only looked at the number of 4 and 5 stars at the top of the page against the number of commits listed at the top, so this doesn't account for walk-ons or transfers or whatnot.
It may be apples to oranges.....but if there were similar data in 1999, I'd be curious to compare VT's ratio with fsu's.
I'd bet it makes our run all the more impressive/improbable given the lack of blue chips on the roster.
According to the star ratings over on TSL, 26 of 92 of our players signed between 1996-1999 were 4 or 5 star recruits. This would put our blue chip ratio at 28%.
If you throw in the 1995 class as well (Beamer Used redshirts almost exclusively), it doesn't change much- 30/111 (~27%).
TSLs recruit ratings tend be overly generous on the top end, so I would imagine we would actually be around 15-20% with the same scale used by the composite today.
I'm building a pre-internet composite from 1980-2002, so one of these days I might be able to provide a little better response!
Also if you know of anybody looking to sell old recruiting magazines over this time frame, I'm in the market.
Basically you can consider this ratio as a highly sensitive, low specificity test for being a natty contender.
Michigan is an interesting case. Storied school with tradition of dominance with champions. For whatever reason, Michigan has proven that they cannot get out of their own way and return to the glory days.
Ohio State resurgence may have been a part of it but they haven't been able to get over the hump/
Every team up there has won multiple national titles. All of them won a title prior to the BCS. UF is the new kid on the block with 1996 being their first. A&M is the longest drought as 1939 as their last.
Modern football is really 1936+ as that is the AP poll era. So A&M is a stretch.
Let's just acknowledge that it's a hard club to get into.
It's almost impossible a club to get into and when Tech was at the door to entering the club our AD and HC decided it cost too much to get in and turned around and walked away.
Interesting take.....
Compare VT immediately post-Vick to Texas A&M post Manziel....
They went all in, program raised (if my reading was correct) $650,000,000 for the football program/stadium, joined the SEC, etc.
But they still aren't there, but arguably much closer than VT.
Yes, it's a hard club to get into....
It's hard to compare A&M pre Manziel vs post because there has always been tons of money there. Also A&M was in the SEC before Manziel. I think the catalyst was moving to the SEC not Manziel cause now they arent in UTs shadow.
A&M's recruiting boosted as soon as it was announced they were going to the SEC. Manziel definitely got them off to super noteworthy and exciting start, but Sumlin maintained that elevated recruiting. Then they got an elite recruiter Jimbo, who elevated the recruiting into elite territory almost immediately. I think their 2019 class was 4th or 5th.
Also worth noting A&M has dumb money donors.