An Overall Look at Big 12 Recruiting

*Posted on The Victory Bells blog on RedRaiderSports.com part of the Y! Rivals network

An attractive night sky is usually complimented by an enormous collection of stars. The same can be said for college football recruiting classes.

The recruiting scoreboard has become wildly popular for college football fans everywhere as media coverage now makes it easier for people to follow their favorite school's recruiting endeavors. Highly rated recruiting classes are celebrated by the thought that winning is now seemingly imminent. 

And just like the stars in the sky, some recruits will shine while others burn out. A three star recruit can become the Heisman trophy winner, while a five star prospect struggles to get playing time. While these cases are rare and recruiting analyst hit more than they miss, few guarantees can be made for any player.

It shouldn't be understated that acquiring top rated prospects on a consistent basis will generally allow a program to have steady success. During any given season, a team's core can consist of players ranging from fifth year seniors to JUCO transfers to highly touted incoming freshman. There isn't a set formula to figure out which players will be the most effective contributors on the football field.

In Big 12 country, Texas and Oklahoma tend to get their pick of the best recruits, a trend that continued with the 2012 recruiting classes. In fact, since Rivals began tracking and ranking recruiting classes in 2002, Texas and Oklahoma have ranked been the top two teams every season.
Over those 11 years, the two schools have combined for nine Big 12 championships which included seven in a row from 2004-10 and ten straight years of winning the South division -- a pretty good showing of dominance.

However, the 2011 season was one filled with unexpected results as Oklahoma State, Kansas State, and Baylor finished top three in the conference. It was the first time since 1997 that neither Texas nor Oklahoma would finish top three in the conference.

Since this type of season was such a rarity in the Big 12, it made me wonder what type of talent these other schools had been acquiring over the past four years and if they were catching up to the likes of Texas and Oklahoma, resulting in a spike in the rankings.

Below is a chart that uses the "points" category on Rivals.com to quantify the quality of recruits each schools is getting. Rivals will assign certain point totals to the best player at each position, which descends as you go down the list of player rankings. Basically, the better the player, the higher the point total and vice versa.

This study looked at the recruiting classes for each Big 12 school over the past four years (2008-11) and tallied up the total of points they received for top quality recruits.

"Total" is the overall amount of points awarded for recruits by Rivals and "Overall" is where the school ranks nationally out of 120 FBS teams.

The perceived talent gap between Texas, Oklahoma, and the rest of the Big 12 the last four years has been huge. While Oklahoma had a bit of a down year, Texas is the one between the two that massively underachieved in 2011.

Texas put up monster recruiting numbers from 2008-11 ranking fourth overall nationally behind Alabama, USC, and Florida. Yet in 2011, the Longhorns were still unable to fully bounce back from their 2010 enigma of a season; UT posted a 4-5 record in conference play, despite having an extreme talent advantage on paper over their conference foes.

Excluding the Sooners, Texas has recruited more four and five star prospects (63) than Oklahoma State, Missouri, Baylor, and Kansas State combined (46) -- the teams that handed the Longhorns four of their five losses this past season.

Regardless of a combined 13-12 record over the past two seasons, the Longhorn finished 2012 with the No. 2 recruiting class and only two less four and five star recruits than the rest of the 2011 version of the Big 12 combined (excluding Oklahoma). The rich get richer.

Speaking of the rich, how about Oklahoma State finally giving billionaire donor T. Boone Pickens some return on his investment? Pickens has pumped over $165 million into Oklahoma State's football program for improvements to facilities and the stadium.ing for the national championship last season, it would be fair to assume the brand new facilities had the top rated recruits flocking to Stillwater similar to other national powerhouses.

That hasn't exactly been the case.

From 2008-11, the Pokes ranked fifth in the Big 12 and 31st nationally in recruiting and have greatly overachieved compared to their recruiting rankings.

Maybe one day Oklahoma State will recruit to the level of Texas and Oklahoma as desired by Pickens. For now, I think it's safe to say Mike Gundy has arrived as one of the nation's elite coaches rather than just some dude who's 40-years-old.

The list of coaches who have overachieved with lesser resources in the Big 12 does not stop with Gundy.

Art Briles and Bill Snyder both had their programs finish in the AP top 15 last season, which is extraordinary for two schools that ranked 49th and 56th nationally in recruiting the past four years. Baylor and Kansas State's combined fifteen four star recruits over the span of four years is the same amount that Texas had in its 2011 class alone (not to mention the Longhorns had a five star on top of that).

The amusing thing about these two coaches and their ten win seasons is that they both did it in completely opposite ways. Briles with high school recruits handpicked to succeed in his wide open passing system. Snyder with a heavy emphasis on transfer students to play in a possession control, protect the ball, run heavy offense.

It will be interesting to see if these two teams can build on their success going into the 2012 season. After all, one is replacing a Heisman trophy winning quarterback and the other will be hoping they can keep their He-Man quarterback in one piece throughout the entire season.

Despite the fourth-best batch of recruits in the Big 12 -- 28th nationally -- the Red Raiders are coming off the programs worst season in nearly 20 years. The insanely large amount of injuries on both sides of the ball surely contributed to the lack of results as did the program's extreme staff turnover on defense over the last three years.

Regardless of the reasons, Tech's 2-7 record in conference play has to be considered a major underachievement in relation to the talent (on paper) of the recruits brought into Lubbock. The Red Raiders will never be a recruiting behemoth like their rivals down in Austin, but they still managed to bring in as many four star recruits over the past four years (19) as Baylor, Kansas State and Iowa State combined - three teams they lost to in 2011 at home or on a neutral site.

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