Gators Have the Most Talent in the Land

ESPN has had their top 150 list five years now. Urban Meyer has been at Florida five years now (ok he's had six recruiting classes but who can hold the first one against any coach). Meyer's ESPN numbers are sick.

The graph are the totals for each season of how many players the schools below signed out of ESPN's top 150 list at season's end. To the far right are the five year totals...

Team	2010	2009	2008	2007	2006	Total
Florida	17	8	11	14	14	64
USC	11	9	10	10	13	53
Texas	15	9	8	12	8	52
Georgia	6	8	8	6	12	40
Notre Dame	2	7	10	10	10	39
LSU	7	10	4	7	6	34
Alabama	9	9	7	3	2	30
Oklahoma	7	6	8	1	6	28
FSU	8	5	5	2	7	27

Some interesting stuff above. Alabama only has 30 but 25 of them have been recruited in the past three years. Florida's had 36 in their last three years alone, more than LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma and FSU in their past five years!

Note that Florida, Texas and USC had 169 out of a total of 750 in ESPN's top 150 list over the past five years. That's 22.5% of the total to 3 schools out of something like 119 schools. That's almost exactly ONE top 150 kid per school (116) per year left.

You can only wonder what the heck is going on at Notre Dame, and perhaps LSU doesn't have as much talent as we all think them to have. Of course many of the top Tigers have stuck and with a large amount of big time recruits you'll see plenty of normal attrition.

Don't know what happened to Oklahoma in 2007, they signed 21, they finished 11-3 and beat Texas that year but they really got creamed by West Virginia 48-28 in the bowl.

It's amazing how much talent Notre Dame has recruited and how little they've done with it. It's time for them to get into a conference, it time for them to get that bulls eye of having their own TV network off their back. You either question the coaching or the assessment of the talent they recruited. Perhaps some of both.

Of course this is all highly unscientific. In the past this man and many others have proved the five-star guys produce. Sure some don't make it, but most do. Recruiting matters.

It's a surprise that Georgia has out recruited LSU, Alabama and Oklahoma yet what happens at Athens? Several years I've looked at players at Georgia and envied many wishing they would have come to Florida.

Some teams that have problem areas can create their own down cycle simply by having to play kids too early in their careers because of no depth, they get injured thus perpetuating the weakness such things can go on for years. Another prime example of the importance of consistent recruiting.