I don’t typically follow Penn State football recruiting closely, unless there is a Lancaster County, PA, player involved. The Terrelle Pryor situation has been tough to avoid though. I thought for sure he would commit to Ohio State, where he would potentially start in a year after Boeckman graduates, and he would have a solid team around him. He might even get some playing time this year, coming in for goal line or other special plays. Michigan is an interesting situation for Pryor - he would likely start right away in RichRod’s spread system, but he wouldn’t have many spread-oriented teammates around him. By the time RichRod recruited those other players and got them developed, Pryor will likely be looking to move on to the NFL. Penn State snuck in again as a possible choice at the last minute. Of course, I always think PSU is a great place for a football player, but we don’t have the best track record in developing QBs, unless their ability and will to win overcomes the lack of development (see Michael Robinson). Will Pryor come to PSU? I don’t know, and there are a lot of other folks who have more interesting theories on that topic than I do. You can even waste a lot of time watching (sometimes really lousy) pleas from fans of various schools on You Tube.
This does lead me to a cool website my friend Eric pointed out to me – a recruiting prediction model developed by Mercer University. This model predicts the school a recruit will choose with 73% accuracy. The model’s creators made some interesting observations, such as “factors like the school’s graduation rate, the number of Bowl Championship Series (BCS) bowl appearances, the current roster depth at the recruited player’s position, the number of players from a specific college drafted by the NFL, and even the number of national championships won by a particular program don’t systematically influence the decisions of high school athletes.” This even surprised the model’s creators.
What does matter?
Whether the athlete made an “official visit” to a specific college
Whether the school is in a BCS conference
The distance from the high school athlete’s hometown to a specific school
Whether the recruit is in the same state as a specific school
The final AP Ranking of a specific school in the previous year of competition
The number of conference titles a school has recorded in recent years
Whether the school is currently under a “bowl ban” for violating NCAA rules
The current number of scholarship reductions a school faces for violating NCAA rules
The size of the team’s stadium (measured in terms of seating capacity)
Whether the school has an on-campus stadium
The current age of the team’s stadium
I’d like to see how “coaching change” factors in to the model.
According to the model, Pryor has a 35.9% chance of committing to PSU, the top predicted choice. Cool! I have a gut feeling that the accuracy might drop on the model after Pryor announces his decision though…
