Recruiting Historical: Penn State's Decline and Resurrection

Yesterday BSD's Matt asked how Penn State could return to the college football elite.  Return, rejoin, whatever word you choose - the inital premise here is that Penn State once crushed opponents on the foosball grid iron, in part because they recruited at a nationally elite level.  That, friends, may be more accurate than you might have guessed.

Although online databases of recruiting starz only stretch back to Penn State's dark ages, we can approximate recruiting starz by looking at the make up of NFL rosters.  Given that the average career of an NFL player is approximately four years, then the change in rostered NFL players for a particular school closely mimics its recruiting cycle.  A linebacker leaves college for the NFL, and is replaced on the team by another recruited linebacker.  Four years later, linebacker B enters the NFL as linebacker A's stint draws to a close (on average, at least).

In other words, the more talent you put into the NFL, the better your recruiting classes were.  And that, friends, is our tenuous proxy for recruiting rankings before the birth of starz rankings.  At least, it is for this post, in which we'll draw wild conclusions of doom and glory.

National Landscape By Conference

Let's first look at the makeup of NFL rosters from a wider lens, the conference level.  Because of the glut of conference realignment that began in the early 1990's, we've normalized the conference data for members by taking today's rolls, and applying them equally across all time points.  Thus, the "1990 Big Ten" in the table below - which had just 10 actual members back then - includes Penn State (who was independent), Nebraska (who was in the Big 8 (which doesn't exist now)), Maryland (ACC), and Rutgers (Independent), for the purposes of this exercise.

Conf	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010	2014
Big Ten	218	253	258	301	329	309
ACC	222	270	273	283	290	324
B12	115	87	110	137	157	180
Pac12	209	258	250	241	231	284
SEC	211	242	261	306	323	406
ALL OTHER	538	575	596	615	608	449

The graph for the table above is your cover photo to this post.  The SEC and Big Ten were long time peers in terms of putting talent into the NFL.  But the SEC took off in the last cycle, and hasn't looked back.  On a per team basis, an average school for each conference was sending the following talent to the pros:

Conf	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010	2014
Big Ten	15.6	18.1	18.4	21.5	23.5	22.1
ACC	15.9	19.3	19.5	20.2	20.7	23.1
B12	11.5	8.7	11.0	13.7	15.7	18.0
Pac12	14.9	18.4	17.9	17.2	16.5	20.3
SEC	15.1	17.3	18.6	21.9	23.1	29.0

The Big Ten and Penn State's Decline

Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1990 (but wouldn't begin competing in conference until 1993).  At that point, Penn State had a sizable lead on its new conference brethren among NFL rosters.  Our Lions played for three national titles in the 1980s, winning two.  None of Michigan State, Michigan, nor Ohio State had played for a single national championship in more than a decade.

SKOOL	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010	2014
Penn State	31	35	33	30	30	28
Nebraska	23	25	31	31	30	26
Michigan State	23	20	24	19	25	24
Ohio State	19	37	34	37	42	37
Michigan	19	23	34	39	33	28
Iowa	18	12	12	22	32	30
Illinois	15	21	16	17	21	23
Maryland	15	12	11	23	25	17
Wisconsin	13	18	23	26	20	34
Purdue	12	13	12	23	24	16
Minnesota	11	7	6	10	11	6
Indiana	9	16	8	7	6	9
Rutgers	5	5	7	7	19	21
Northwestern	5	9	7	10	11	10

After Penn State joined the conference, it didn't take Ohio State and Michigan long to wake up.  Nebraska, as well, was enjoying its greatest run of football since Bob Devaney roamed the sideline in a hilarious red fedora.  Call it age, complacency, nepotism, an unwillingness to spend, a stodgy focus on academics, or what have you, but Penn State's pool of talent peaked in 1995, and dropped thereafter, despite the NFL increasing its roster spots (via league expansion from 28 to 32 teams, and via simple roster numbers (from 45 to 48 to 53 to 61, including practice squads).  What had been an 8-player advantage over the next best conference mate in 1990, fell to a T-4th place mark in 2010, and a 12 player deficit to Ohio State.

Net Players	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010	2014
PSU vs. OSU	12	-2	-1	-7	-12	-9
PSU vs. Michigan	12	12	-1	-9	-3	0
PSU vs. Nebraska	8	10	2	-1	0	2
PSU vs. Sparty	8	15	9	11	5	4
PSU vs. Iowa	13	23	21	8	-2	-2
PSU vs. Wisconsin	18	17	10	4	10	-6
PSU vs. Rutgers	26	30	26	23	11	7
PSU vs. Maryland	16	23	22	7	5	11
PSU vs. Illinois	16	14	17	13	9	5
PSU vs. Purdue	19	22	21	7	6	12
PSU vs. jNW	26	26	26	20	19	18
PSU vs. Indiana	22	19	25	23	24	19
PSU vs. Minnesota	20	28	27	20	19	22
Summed Net Advantage:	216	237	204	119	91	83
PSU's Conf. Rank:	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	4th	4th

Tell me if this surprises you: Penn State's recent teams, as reflected by future pro talent, had slipped a bit.  But, relative to the competition, Penn State slipped a lot. In other words, it wasn't so much that Penn State changed from what it had always done, more or less.  It was that the world around Penn State changed, and Penn State didn't (yes - for both better and worse).  In the table below, we divide every school's count of rostered NFL players per year by four (to approximate a "per recruiting class" figure), and order them from largest to smallest (which gives us an approximated "recruiting class rank").   Penn State's rate of talent production (and, by extension, acquisition) didn't fall off the planet.  But it's rank relative to its peers did.

	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010	2014
Penn State Pros/Class	7.75	8.75	8.25	7.50	7.50	7.00
Penn State Natl Rank	3	4	6	10	14	22

Penn State's Road Back

Great players make great coaches.  There's an argument to be made for the reverse of that, too, of course.  But if Ohio State's 30+ Lombardi-era power traps in the recent national championship taught us anything, it's that football, by and large, remains a game based on physical domination, less about trickeration.  And the coach with the biggest, fastest, and strongest players looks smarter than a coach whose roster is only big, or only fast.

To that end, James Franklin, despite the sanctions handicap, is well on his way to signing Penn State's best recruiting class in many years.  He also has something to offer that almost no other blue blood program can offer today - playing time, and lots of it.  With a truncated roster, incoming recruits stand an excellent chance of seeing the field early and often.

Talent Ranks - Penn State and Key Conference Foes

National Ranks	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010	2014
Penn State	3	4	6	10	14	22
Ohio State	20	2	3	5	2	8
Michigan	NR	17	4	3	9	21
Wisconsin	NR	NR	NR	20	16	12
Michigan State	11	24	18	NR	19	NR

Talent Ranks - Coaching Change, Sanctions, or (sometimes) Both

National Ranks	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010	2014
Alabama	25	18	NR	NR	17	2
Oklahoma	NR	NR	NR	17	15	13
Miami	1	1	10	2	1	1
Nebraska	12	15	7	9	13	25
Kansas State	NR	NR	NR	21	NR	NR
Texas	18	NR	NR	NR	3	10
Florida State	10	3	1	1	12	5
UNC	21	7	5	14	NR	23
Oregon	NR	NR	NR	NR	25	9
Clemson	24	20	NR	NR	NR	20
Washington	4	6	15	19	NR	NR
LSU	13	25	22	8	4	4
Tennessee	9	5	8	4	8	11
Florida	16	16	2	6	6	7

Keep in mind that, since we're ranking rostered NFL players, the cause precedes the results shown in the table.  Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson won a ton of games in Miami with a ton of talented players from the 1980's and early 90's.  The Canes got smacked by sanctions in 1995, and by 2000, their count of NFL players had fallen from 1st to 10th.  But between 2000 - 2002, they lost just twice, while producing a string of NFL talent rarely seen.  And by 2005, more Canes were in the NFL - again - than from any other college team.

Oklahoma got spanked in the 1980's.  By 1990, the program was a shell of its wishbone glory, and a series of poor coaching hires kept the Sooners out of the running in the talent acquisition game.  Then Bob Stoops came to Norman, and returned OU to the land of the living.  Alabama cut a similar path.

UNC's fall and Texas' rise are the result of the same man - Mack Brown.  Spurrier boosted Florida, and Meyer kept it going, though that's likely to wane in a similar fashion to Tennessee, who bumbled a canning of Phil Fulmer for Lane Kiffen and Derek Dooley (and finally, Butch Jones).  Nebraska, similarly but in stronger fashion, hasn't been able to recapture its Tom Osbourne glory - and Bill Callahan and Bo Pelini play a role in that.

It's certainly possible that Penn State's talent count drops (from #22 in 2014) before it gets better.  But with the young talent on hand, and the talent expected to sign in a few weeks (and, the talent committed to 2016 as well as the still openly gaping holes in our roster), we're more likely to see a Miami style recovery than an Oklahoma one.