Interesting analysis I saw from a poster on 247. Seems to confirm that PSU outperforms our recruiting rankings very consistently.

LudicrousSpeedGO!

LudicrousSpeedGO!

Active member
Winning percentage since 2014 (Franklin era)
1752261775497.png

Then he admits to cherry picking 2016 as start date to exclude 2014 & 2015 Sanctions campaigns:

Top 15 Teams in winning % seasons post PSU renaissance era 2016-2024:
user generated

And in a separate post he analyzes starting in 2016 while ignoring the Covid season (we unfortunately followed every rule while clearly others didn't and that season really didn't matter anyway).

1752261945297.png

At any rate, we average recruiting classes in the mid-teens
2014 #24
2015 #14
2016 #20
2017 #15
2018 #6
2019 #12
2020 #15
2021 #21
2022 #6
2023 #14
2024 #15

But any measure that was posted above
Winning % since 2014 #9
Winning % since 2016 (non-sanction years) #8
Winning % since 2016 (non-sanction years excluding the covid throw-away year) #6 (and we may pass Michigan after their penalty comes down)

we performed as a top 5 to 10 team with about #15 ranked recruits.

Or we can measure by the number of NFL draft picks since 2014:

Schools with the Most NFL Draft Picks Since 2014​

Top Schools​

Top 25 College Football Teams by NFL Draft Picks Since 2014​

1Alabama65
2LSU65
3USC62
4Ohio State56
5Florida55
6Georgia54
7Michigan50
8Oklahoma49
9Texas48
10Penn State47
11Miami (FL)46
12Notre Dame45
13Washington44
14Oregon43
15Auburn42
16Tennessee41
17Iowa40
18Wisconsin39
19South Carolina38
20Nebraska37
21Texas A&M36
22Utah35
23Michigan State34
24North Carolina33
25Arizona State32
[th]
Rank​
[/th][th]
College Football Team​
[/th][th]
Total NFL Draft Picks​
[/th]​


Clearly Penn State under James Franklin is outperforming our recruiting rankings. My question is this due to:
1) Finding under-rated recruits
2) Developing players well above their recruiting rankings
3) Strength and conditioning program
4) Some combination of 1 through 3

???
 
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Also, analyzing other programs:

Ohio St, Alabama, and Georgia are the recruiting champs, and it isn't close. Their winning percentage reflects this but Ohio St and definitely Georgia are not quite putting them in the NFL at the rate that their recruiting rankings indicate that they should.

Not surprisingly USC, Clemson, Notre Dame, LSU, Miami, Oregon, Oklahoma and Michigan are in that next tier of recruiting and perform in line with that (LSU a little low on winning % but high on NFL picks). That is except for a few glaring omissions:

1) Notre Dame gets the results on the field in line with their recruiting, but they simply aren't putting them in the NFL at the rate that they should. They aren't even in the top 10 in this category despite being a solid top 5 to top 10 recruiting team. Ditto for Oregon and Clemson.

2) USC, LSU, and Miami put the players in the NFL, but they aren't getting the results for their winning % that they should.

Again, PSU outperforms their winning % pretty significantly in both winning % and NFL draft picks under Franklin. Wisconsin, Iowa, and Washington also seem to outperform their recruiting rankings, but they are definitely a notch below PSU in recruiting rankings, winning %, and NFL draft picks. They are essentially a poor man's outperforming school.
 
joejohn said:
Who performed the analysis?
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The winning % data came from a poster on 247 named mah358. He seems to be well regarded there. The recruiting rankings are from 247 composite. The NFL draft pick data is AI generated answers for 2014 to present. You can perform your own analysis. The data is correct from the sources listed.
 
Lazy Dave said:
I think this is great info. Glad you shared it from 247 (I read it there as well).

The solution? Outspend OSU, UGA, Bama.
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Or at least be in their ballpark. If we can push our recruiting from 15ish average to top 10, then we will start to win our share against OSU, Oregon, and Michigan. We seem to be out-developing those schools or at least have better scouting.
 
LudicrousSpeedGO! said:
Or at least be in their ballpark. If we can push our recruiting from 15ish average to top 10, then we will start to win our share against OSU, Oregon, and Michigan. We seem to be out-developing those schools or at least have better scouting.
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We need to get a top 10 class every 4 years. Then stay around 15 the other years. That should be enough to win these big games. It should have been enough to beat ND last year and Oregon and perhaps OSU We had a good shot to win all of them. The Oregon loss had a lot to do with Allen's typical unpreparedness to start games and it killed us. Glad he is gone.
 
ryoder1 said:
We need to get a top 10 class every 4 years. Then stay around 15 the other years. That should be enough to win these big games. It should have been enough to beat ND last year and Oregon and perhaps OSU We had a good shot to win all of them. The Oregon loss had a lot to do with Allen's typical unpreparedness to start games and it killed us. Glad he is gone.
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Ohio St has a top 5 or better class every single year. They have shared the top spot in team composite with Alabama and Georgia most years and now Oregon is knocking on that door too in conference. It is hard to overcome that talent gap with an average of 15th rated classes. It just is.

We are exceeding expectations with what we bring in, but we need to increase our recruiting average to top ten to win instead of just being competitive against the top teams in the country. 2027 could be the start of this, particularly if we can ride the unique set of returning talent to a national title appearance this year. That would have a dramatic impact on 2027, 2028, and 2029 recruiting IMO.
 
LudicrousSpeedGO! said:
Ohio St has a top 5 or better class every single year. They have shared the top spot in team composite with Alabama and Georgia most years and now Oregon is knocking on that door too in conference. It is hard to overcome that talent gap with an average of 15th rated classes. It just is.

We are exceeding expectations with what we bring in, but we need to increase our recruiting average to top ten to win instead of just being competitive against the top teams in the country. 2027 could be the start of this, particularly if we can ride the unique set of returning talent to a national title appearance this year. That would have a dramatic impact on 2027, 2028, and 2029 recruiting IMO.
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Those are the NFL pipeline teams. They are consistently getting more kids drafted. If you start for one of those teams, you’ll get an nfl shot.

At PSU we get a lot of good RBs, DEs and TEs because we put those kids in the nfl. 18 year olds see Saquon, Warren and Parsons and want to be then. We haven’t done well at WR, and QB to name two and therefore that is a tough recruit for us to get. we seem to be doing better at CB & S.

But we lack consistency across all 22 positions. And that has been our problem.
 
Most of those years were before the NIL ERA. Look where we are now:

2022 #6

2023 #14 (11-2)
2024 #15 (10-3)
2025 #16 (13-3)

PSU has had 3 strong years largely on the strength of the #6 class. You would hope that the recent success, $5m/yr for top level OC & DC, and $700m in facility spending would elevate the recruiting but that hasn't been the case.

On3 says that Penn State has a $59,000 average payout for players. That’s lower than Texas Tech ($81k), Washington ($72k), Ole Miss ($72k), South Carolina ($72k), and BYU ($69k). Penn State is frequently in the final groupings for recruits who hold offers from Oregon ($232k), Georgia ($189k), Ohio State ($150k), Notre Dame ($104k), and Michigan ($91k), who all significantly outspend the Nittany Lions.

So what happens after this year when members of the 2022 class are gone (Allar, Singleton, Allen, Sutton, Shelton, Durant, etc)? It seems to me we're going to have to outperform our recruiting if we hope to regularly to be a playoff team.
 
Sherriff Coffee said:
Those are the NFL pipeline teams. They are consistently getting more kids drafted. If you start for one of those teams, you’ll get an nfl shot.

At PSU we get a lot of good RBs, DEs and TEs because we put those kids in the nfl. 18 year olds see Saquon, Warren and Parsons and want to be then. We haven’t done well at WR, and QB to name two and therefore that is a tough recruit for us to get. we seem to be doing better at CB & S.

But we lack consistency across all 22 positions. And that has been our problem.
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I disagree. For example, Ohio St has averaged 1 more NFL draft pick per year than PSU since 2014. Yet they have 29 5-star recruits over that timeframe to PSU's 11. They have 90 top 100 recruits over that timeframe to PSU's 28. They have 156 4-star recruits over that timeframe to PSU's 118. If they are an NFL pipeline, then PSU is an NFL superhighway!

It's conversion rate. The ratio of NFL picks to 5-stars for Ohio St is 56/29 = 1.93. For PSU this is 4.18 (which is over twice as good).
The ratio for NFL picks to top 100 recruits for Ohio St is 0.62. For PSU this ratio is 1.64 (which is nearly three times as good).

If top recruits were logical, did their homework, they would see that hands down PSU is the better path to the NFL than Ohio St. They have many more top recruits that flame out than PSU and never make the league. PSU has many more that maximize their potential and it isn't even close.
 
bdroc said:
Most of those years were before the NIL ERA. Look where we are now:

2022 #6

2023 #14 (11-2)
2024 #15 (10-3)
2025 #16 (13-3)

PSU has had 3 strong years largely on the strength of the #6 class. You would hope that the recent success, $5m/yr for top level OC & DC, and $700m in facility spending would elevate the recruiting but that hasn't been the case.

On3 says that Penn State has a $59,000 average payout for players. That’s lower than Texas Tech ($81k), Washington ($72k), Ole Miss ($72k), South Carolina ($72k), and BYU ($69k). Penn State is frequently in the final groupings for recruits who hold offers from Oregon ($232k), Georgia ($189k), Ohio State ($150k), Notre Dame ($104k), and Michigan ($91k), who all significantly outspend the Nittany Lions.

So what happens after this year when members of the 2022 class are gone (Allar, Singleton, Allen, Sutton, Shelton, Durant, etc)? It seems to me we're going to have to outperform our recruiting if we hope to regularly to be a playoff team.
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I agree. We need to take that next step in recruiting. A potential national championship appearance or title would go a long way to achieve that. But it is going to take a financial commitment to some top recruits to get there as well. Hopefully freeing up some money after our top guys hit the draft this season will allow for it.
 
LudicrousSpeedGO! said:
I agree. We need to take that next step in recruiting. A potential national championship appearance or title would go a long way to achieve that. But it is going to take a financial commitment to some top recruits to get there as well. Hopefully freeing up some money after our top guys hit the draft this season will allow for it.
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I'm not optimistic about PSU's ability to keep up with teams like OSU. Revenue sharing should help a little bit. OSU spends $20m compared to our $12m. Revenue sharing could add $20m to each team which would lower the percentage gap even if not the absolute dollar gap.
 
LudicrousSpeedGO! said:
If top recruits were logical, did their homework, they would see that hands down PSU is the better path to the NFL than Ohio St. They have many more top recruits that flame out than PSU and never make the league. PSU has many more that maximize their potential and it isn't even close.
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Current NFL players by school:
OSU 64
MICH 63
PSU 49
 
bdroc said:
Current NFL players by school:
OSU 64
MICH 63
PSU 49
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That's one measure and by it we still outproduce Ohio St relative to our recruiting rankings by a large margin. For example, they have recruited over 3X more top 100 players than PSU since Franklin took the reins (including our sanction years). They really should have at least twice as many players in the NFL as PSU to even begin to claim that the return on the investment of top 100 players committing to Ohio St is close to that of PSU.

However, the number in the NFL currently is not as accurate of a measure as the number of players that each team has had drafted. That is the goal. By that measure, they have 56 since 2014 and we have 46. Again, that is with them having over 3X as many top 100 recruits to work with including about 3X as many 5 stars. So why can't they get more players drafted? They literally are only averaging 1 more draft pick per year over this timeframe which is almost negligible.

Frankly, I have no idea how PSU is taking an average star rating of recruits almost an entire star lower than Ohio St and still putting almost as many as they do into the league. It is pretty remarkable. If we had their recruiting rankings, we would likely be far and away above Alabama, LSU, and USC. All of those are kicking Ohio St's butt in NFL draft picks over the Franklin era at PSU. And only Alabama has close to equal recruiting as Ohio St. The only way to interpret those NFL draft pick numbers with respect to the recruiting rankings over that timeframe is that Penn St is massively outperforming in developing talent to NFL level and Ohio St is at minimum slightly underperforming.
 
OSU is getting 16 to 20 4* or higher players per year (assumption, i didn't verify this). Only 22 can start at a given time. They can't put every kid in the league. It's an impossible task.

All 3 schools are in the top 10 of this I'm sure, but what is the top? At some point, it levels off even if you bring in 5x as many.
 
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