Before the national championship game, we did a story on how the team with the better recruiting ranking almost always won the title game. The premise held up Monday night, too.
We decided to look at the final Associated Press top 25 poll from this season and compare that with how well each school recruited in the past five recruiting cycles (2011-15); that takes into account true freshmen through fifth-year seniors for each school. 247Sports.com’s composite class rankings were our guide.
Sixty percent (15 of 25) of the final top 25 teams had an average recruiting ranking of 20th or worse over the past five classes.