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Of late, a lot has been made of OU’s failures in BCS bowl games, and especially the National Championship (NC) games.  OU’s been in 4 NC games since 2000 and lost 3 of them, including a blowout pasting at the hands of USC.  Questions have been asked about whether or not to retain Coach Stoops (see my earlier blog on this topic).  Has OU been underachieving during this extended series of losses in season-ending bowl games?  OU haters are reveling in the joy of rubbing it in about these big-game losses (including 4 out of the last 5 Red River Shoot Out games).

Against the backdrop of this apparent decline in OU football success, ESPN recently did the calculations to rank all the Division 1-A (FBS, if you prefer) teams in terms of “prestige”, using a fairly complex formula that accounts for various elements of “prestige”:  NCs, berths in major bowls, Heisman winners,  conference records, etc.  They began the tally in 1936 – the first year of the AP poll – and included results through the 2008 bowl season.  The result?  OU finished #1 for the period 1936-2008 under consideration, just ahead of USC.  The Sooners have finished #1 in "prestige" by this ranking scheme in every decade since the one ending in 1958.

Football fans are quite prone to favor statistics that make their teams look good when they argue with fans from other teams.  Any effort such as that done by the “ESPN researchers” involve making choices.  What period to consider?  What statistical measures should be used?  How should the measures be weighted toward the overall results?  How much should a NC win count versus having a Heisman Trophy winner?  No matter what choices are made, the results inevitably depend on those choices and the ESPN researchers were careful to point this out.  Overall, they seem to have done a credible job, but of course the OU haters are quick to point out what they see as deficiencies in the system.

For my money, I’ll bet the ESPN researchers didn’t conspire to make OU the winner of this ranking system.  I figure they made up the system and let the chips fall where they may.  OU haters may not like the result, but I doubt seriously that this outcome represents some sort of conspiracy to downplay the prestige of other teams.

O.K., so there seems to be a contradiction here – is OU still among the elite programs in the US or are they underachieving losers on their way into a decline toward mediocrity?  I’m not about to make any predictions here, but I want to explore the notion of them being underachievers.

Sports Illustrated also just ran a story about college football recruiting and how it relates to team success.  In a nutshell, among those teams within states having a large number of high-quality high school football players that were recruited to play at BCS schools, the most successful were those who were able to recruit most of the good players from their state.  According to their data, the top 25 states (including their 2004-2008 BCS recruit totals) were:

 1    Florida (981)
 2    Texas (974)
 3    California (826)
 4    Georgia (481)
 5    Ohio (362)
 6    Pennsylvania (281)
 7    Alabama (245)
 8    New Jersey (232)
 9    North Carolina (229)
10    Virginia (209)
11    Illinois (194)
12    Louisiana (184)
13    South Carolina (169)
14    Michigan (150)
15    Mississippi (149)
16    Tennessee (149)
17    Maryland (145)
18    Missouri (118)
19    Oklahoma (117)
20    Washington (117)
21    New York (112)
22    Arizona (103)
23    Kentucky (92)
24    Arkansas (87)
25    Indiana (86)
 
Note that Oklahoma is rather far down that list, whereas the top 3 states, with a big drop-off to number 4 are:  Florida, Texas, and California.  If you believe this story’s premise that retaining a high percentage of high-quality in-state recruits should relate to success, then this should be reasonably well-correlated to success for schools by state.

The top 10 teams in the final AP poll for 2008:

1. Florida
2. Utah
3. USC
4. Texas
5. Oklahoma
6. Alabama
7. TCU
8. Penn State
9. Ohio State
10. Oregon

This outcome for the 2008 season suggests that Utah, Oklahoma, and Oregon actually overachieved, while TCU and Ohio State evidently underachieved.  The others were close to where you’d expect them to be, if your expectations are based only on their ranking according to the size of their state’s talent pool.  Of course, UTx generally is the most successful team within the state of Texas (where there are several BCS schools) at recruiting Texas talent, and TCU lags behind in that regard, although not so far apparently as Texas A&M, Texas Tech, etc.  And TCU in-state recruiting is on the rise ... but I digress ..

 
Oklahoma, on the other hand, has been quite successful in “cherry-picking” BCS-quality recruits from Texas for many years – their talent level is considerably higher than you would expect from their in-state talent level alone.  According to the SI story, only about 25% of their recruits are from Oklahoma, but almost 50% are within 200 miles of Norman, including a number from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

This information about recruiting seems to suggest that, on the whole, OU has had a lengthy period (beginning in the 1950s) of doing better with the talent they’ve been able to attract than could be expected on the basis of their in-state talent pool. On the other hand, although UTx has done about as well as can reasonably be expected with their in-state talent (again, expectations based only on the size of the talent pool in their state), it hasn’t overachieved with the players they’ve recruited.

Why has OU done so well with recruiting in Texas?  I don't pretend to know a definitive explanation, but Oklahoma is right next to Texas.  It can be about as far to Norman, from at least some parts of Texas, as it is to Austin!  Distance is apparently not a big issue in recruiting Texas kids to come to OU – in a state where it can be 800 miles from one extreme to another, distance doesn’t seem so important!  Recruiting also relates to how good the coach is at evaluating talent, and in convincing the recruits (and their families) that coming to OU is going to be a good thing.  A record of past success for Texas recruits at OU (and beyond) doesn’t hurt.  An OU coach who can’t convince Texas kids to come to OU likely isn’t going to be around very long!

The fact that OU has been so good for so long, as evidenced by their “prestige” rankings, is testimony that during the period 1936-2008, on the average, OU achieves a lot with its talent, and generally finds good talent willing to come to OU.