Statistical Analysis of 2012 Recruiting: By State

This is a little bit later than I normally post this series, but better late than never.  Using the 2012 Offer Board, I put together the above graph of Michigan offers from the 2012 class.  For a comparison to past years, you can look here.  Michigan sent out 193 recorded offers in 2012, which was essentially on par with the 195 offers in 2011 and 192 offers in 2010.

You can see that Iowa was a good place to recruit for Michigan's coaches in 2012, mainly because Amara Darboh was the only guy they recruited from the state.

Otherwise, the states of Michigan and Ohio were very productive, with 75% and 32% success rates, respectively.  Much like in the state of Iowa, the coaching staff cherry-picked a few recruits from Kentucky (Jeremy Clark), Missouri (Jehu Chesson, Ondre Pipkins), Tennessee (Blake Bars), and Utah (Sione Houma).  The fertile recruiting grounds of California produced only one Michigan commit in the form of Erik Magnuson.

States included in the "Other" category, which produced zero commits, are:

- Alabama (1)

- Arizona (3)

- Colorado (4)

- District of Columbia (2)
- Florida (16)

- Georgia (11)

- Illinois (7)

- Indiana (3)

- Louisiana (1)

- Maryland (9)

- Massachusetts (3)

- Minnesota (2)

- New Jersey (7)

- New York (2)

- North Carolina (6)

- Oklahoma (1)

- Pennsylvania (8)

- South Carolina (4)

- Texas (22)

- Virginia (2)

- Washington (2)

- Wisconsin (2)

The lack of success in Florida is obviously a contrast to the Rich Rodriguez years, but Florida was also targeted much less by Brady Hoke.  Hoke sent 16 offers out in Florida this past recruiting cycle, while Rodriguez typically offered 40+.

The five states where Michigan threw out double-digit offers in 2012 were Ohio (28), Texas (22), California (19), Michigan (12), and Georgia (11).  Michigan and Ohio were obviously roaring successes, but the other three states combined for one commitment (Magnuson) out of 52 offers.

Statistical Analysis of 2011 Recruiting: By State

Last year I became curious about how successful Michigan was at recruiting each state.  That curiosity has spilled over to the 2011 class, and the chart above shows the percentages of successfully recruited players from each state.  This is all based upon offers recorded on the 2011 Offer Board located at the top of the page.  I can't promise that it's 100% accurate, because sometimes reporting of offers is a little bit iffy.  But it's the best I could do.

It should also be pointed out that Brady Hoke's late hiring as Michigan's coach somewhat skews the numbers.  Players who decommitted (Jake Fisher from Michigan; Matt Goudis from California; Kevin Sousa and Dallas Crawford from Florida) would have changed the numbers slightly.

As might be expected, Michigan was the most successfully recruited state.  Nearly 50% of in-state offers were accepted; the decommitment of Fisher was the only thing standing in the way.

Texas was a bit of a surprise.  Michigan pulled in three commitments from Texas - a heavily talented state - while only giving out eleven offers.  But it's a bit curious that Michigan's coaches didn't pursue more players in the state.  Running backs coach Fred Jackson has some contacts in Texas, and even though several Rich Rodriguez assistants had connections in Florida (where Michigan tossed out 43 offers), the success rate in Florida over the past couple years has been abysmal.  Michigan went 3-for-46 (7%) in Florida last year, and that number looks like an unbridled success when compared to the 1-for-43 showing this year (2%).

After crunching the numbers for two consecutive seasons, it seems that Michigan's coaches probably wasted quite a bit of time recruiting the Sunshine State.  Maybe it was a risk-reward thing with Rodriguez (after all, Denard Robinson is from Florida), but a batting average of .020 is horrible, no matter how you slice it.  When you hand out 190 offers, you probably spend quite a bit of time talking to kids or the coaches of kids who have very little chance of attending your university.  Perhaps Rich Rodriguez and Co. would have benefitted from making more intimate connections with fewer kids rather than, as one commenter said, "carpet bombing" the country with offers.

Ohio was once again recruited with some success (37% in 2010; 24% in 2011), and Hoke will surely continue to work hard in the state.  Even though Rodriguez got a large number of 2010 recruits from Ohio, he didn't seem to hit the state very hard in his last season.  The percentage of accepted offers jumped significantly once Hoke was hired.  He reeled in four recruits in approximately three weeks on the job, including the likes of Tamani Carter, Antonio Poole, Keith Heitzman, and Frank Clark.  Prior to his arrival, Rodriguez had accepted only three commitments from Ohioans - Greg Brown, Jack Miller, and Chris Rock.

Altogether, Michigan offered players from 27 different states.  The Wolverines struck out in twenty of them, including:

Pennsylvania: 12
Louisiana, New Jersey: 8
Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina: 6
North Carolina, Virginia: 5
District of Columbia: 2
Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wisconsin: 1

Statistical Analysis of 2011 Recruiting: By Team

Desmond Howard was one of many Michigan greats who grew up in Ohio

There's no real breaking news to report here.  It just gives you an idea who Michigan's biggest foes are in the recruiting world.  As you can see below, Ohio State is Enemy #1.  (For comparison's sake, not one of Michigan's commits this year had an offer from the Buckeyes, as far as I know.)  After that it falls off to Auburn, then Florida State, then a tie between Tennessee and Wisconsin, and then everyone else.

Below is a list of each school that pulled in at least one Michigan offeree.  For particular players, check the 2011 Offer Board:

Ohio State: 12

Auburn: 8

Florida State: 7

Tennessee, Wisconsin: 6

Alabama, Georgia, Miami, Notre Dame, Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, South Carolina, USC: 5

Florida, LSU, North Carolina, Virgina, Virginia Tech: 4

Boston College, Clemson, Michigan State, Nebraska, Oregon, Texas, Texas Tech, UCLA: 3
Cal, Iowa, Mississippi, Stanford, Wake Forest: 2

Arizona State, Arkansas, Central Florida, Colorado, Georgia Tech, Houston, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa State, Kent State, Kentucky, NC State, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Purdue, SMU, Syracuse, TCU, Texas A&M, Troy, Tulane, Utah, Vanderbilt, West Virginia: 1
_________________________________________________________

Brady Hoke has stated that he wants to get back to recruiting the midwest, and that means beating Ohio State for recruits.  You can see that Wisconsin's recent success has made them a formidable opponent in recruiting.  And with as much as Rodriguez recruited the state of Pennsylvania, they lost out on 10 total recruits to the big state schools (PSU, Pitt).

Michigan State, as you can see, did not win many recruiting battles with Michigan.  Brennen Beyer, Frank Clark, Justice Hayes, and Jack Miller were all kids with MSU offers who chose the Wolverines.  And there has been some disagreement about whether MSU running back Onaje Miller was actually offered by Michigan, although I include him because his Rivals profile says so.  Overall, I would say Michigan came out the winner against their in-state rivals.

The Wolverines still have an uphill battle to win recruits away from Ohio State, and that's tough to do because Ohio typically has more talent than Michigan.  But if and when Michigan starts winning some of those battles on the field, I expect more and more recruits from the Toledo area (which is geographically closer to Ann Arbor than Columbus) to take interest in playing for the Wolverines.

Statistical Analysis of 2011 Recruiting: By Conference

If you tally the offers above, Michigan handed out 189 offers to high school recruits for the Class of 2011.  These offers were reported by recruiting sites (Rivals, Scout) or news sources (such as local newspapers).  Surely 189 isn't the exact number of offers sent out, because some kids probably never bothered reporting their Michigan offers and some kids probably exaggerated on their recruiting profiles.  But this represents all offers that were made available to my attention, both from Rich Rodriguez and new head coach Brady Hoke.

For comparison's sake, Rich Rodriguez offered 190 recruits in 2010.

Although Michigan can receive National Letters of Intent until April 1, it seems that the class has been capped at 20 recruits.  So some quick math tells us that 10.6% of recruits who were tendered scholarship offers from Michigan actually accepted that offer (compared to 14.2% last year).  Combining those 20 recruits with the 34 who pledged to other Big Ten schools (including Nebraska), a total of 54 offerees chose the Big Ten.

The twelve-team SEC was actually Michigan's biggest competition, accepting commitments from 42 players who were offered by the Maize and Blue.  The ACC reeled in the same number as the rest of the Big Ten: 34.

Jumping down the list, five recruits remain undecided or might be headed to junior college: Jadeveon Clowney, Shawn Conway, Taques Franklin, Prince Holloway, and Dexter Staley.  As #1 recruits are wont to do in recent years (Terrelle Pryor in 2008, Bryce Brown in 2009, Seantrel Henderson in 2010, etc.), this year's consensus #1 recruit, Jadeveon Clowney, has yet to make a decision.  He will likely choose an SEC school (probably South Carolina), further cementing the SEC as Michigan's prime competition for recruits.

One player, kicker Connor Loftus from California, chose to attend the University of Pennsylvania, an FCS school.

Interestingly, this is the exact same order that appeared during the 2010 recruiting cycle (NOTE: last year's chart did not include Michigan commitments in the Big Ten's total).  The 2010 class even featured the Big Ten garnering 54 Michigan offerees, an exact replica of the 2011 class.  That's flippin' weird.  Anyway, the Big Ten was then followed by the SEC, then the ACC, Pac-10, Big East, Big 12, etc.

That, folks, is a pattern.  Or . . . well . . . at least a coincidence.

Statistical Analysis of 2010 Recruiting: Part IV

There's not much to analyze with this information, but it's still interesting to see. I created a breakdown of the teams and, thus, the conferences that Michigan recruits chose instead of the Wolverines.

With a significant number of offers going to kids in Florida, Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina, it's really no surprise that the Wolverines' biggest opponent is the Southeastern Conference. Forty-six of the 162 Michigan offerees who committed elsewhere ended up in the SEC, 13 of whom picked the Florida Gators.

Michigan picked up 27 commitments in the class of 2010 . . . and lost 27 recruits to other Big Ten schools. Despite the 30 offers to kids in Ohio, Michigan lost eight kids to Penn State and only seven to Ohio State. Michigan State got five.

The biggest surprise to me on the list was the #3 conference on the graph, the Atlantic Coast Conference. ACC teams picked off 26 Michigan offerees, just one less than the rest of the Big Ten. I never really thought Michigan went head-to-head against the ACC very much, but with Rich Rodriguez putting such an emphasis on recruiting the state of Florida, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Florida State and Miami combined to take 14 kids.

The rest of the list fills out about like I expected. West Coast recruits tend to stay out west. I can't understand why a kid from sunny southern California wouldn't want to, I don't know, see snow for the first time or live on a peninsula. Not just any peninsula, either, but a lower peninsula. But whatever.

Michigan does share some recruiting ground with the Big East, such as Pennsylvania and Maryland. Luckily, the Big East's hitches are tied to teams like Dantonio's estranged stepchild Cincinnati and . . . uhhh . . . Rutgers. Pitt ended up being the biggest threat for Michigan recruits, picking up five commitments. Pitt has pulled in a few guys in the past couple years who could be helping Michigan right now, like Cam Saddler and Shayne Hale, but generally Pitt doesn't recruit on the same level as the Wolverines.

The Big 12 is next on the list, and then Independents. I tried to be all-inclusive with "Independents," but really what that means is Notre Dame. Don't worry, Michigan didn't lose any recruits to Army. Then comes the the Mountain West Conference (Lucky Radley to Utah, Tony Drake to Colorado State), the Mid-American Conference (Cassius McDowell to Toledo, Travis Williams to Miami-OH), and Conference USA (Brandon Gainer to Central Florida); none of whom had a committable Michigan offer by the end of the cycle. No one chose a WAC school over Michigan, presumably because they didn't want to play on blue turf. I can't say that I blame them.

Statistical Analysis of 2010 Recruiting: Part III

As I was keeping track of Michigan's recruiting efforts throughout the 2010 cycle, I began to wonder where Michigan has the most success in recruiting. The obvious answers would be "in state" and "near home" and those answers held true, to no one's surprise.

You can see in the above chart (click to enlarge) that Michigan got the best bang for its buck in contiguous states like Wisconsin and Ohio. Pennsylvania is #5 on the list.

Sitting there at #4, though, is Louisiana. Michigan got two of the six prospects who were offered, slot receiver Drew Dileo and safety Carvin Johnson. The other four were WR Trovon Reed (Auburn), QB Munchie Legaux (Cincinnati), DE Jordan Allen (LSU), and CB Ronnie Vinson (LSU). Of those four, only Legaux didn't have an LSU offer. As I said in yesterday's post, kids in the deep south tend to stay in the deep south if a decent local program offers. Reed spurned LSU for a school in neighboring Alabama, but Allen and Vinson jumped at the opportunity to play in the Bayou.

Moving on to Florida, that percentage might be a bit alarming. The Wolverines extended more offers to Florida than any other individual state by far - 46 offers in all, beating Ohio by 16 - but Michigan's success rate in the Sunshine State was just below 7%. With all three commitments from Florida being 4-stars (Demar Dorsey, Marvin Robinson, Richard Ash), the kids Michigan has stolen have been elite talents. But this is something to watch in the coming years. If Rich Rodriguez continues to offer a high volume of kids from Florida, hopefully the commitments he gets remain elite players. I would hate to see the coaching staff spend such significant time and effort on Florida only to get middling recruits from the state. That being said, the coaches have done a good job there over the past couple years. They've established a pipeline from Pahokee (Martavious Odoms, Brandin Hawthorne, Vincent Smith, Richard Ash) and could be in the process of building a pipeline from Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando (Ricardo Miller transferred from Dr. Phillips to Ann Arbor Pioneer after committing, and 2011 prospects Demetrius Hart and Hasean Clinton-Dix have both been offered).

Rodriguez knows what side his bread is buttered on. He'll continue to get a high volume of recruits from Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and he'll try to pluck a few elite talents out of Florida. Those efforts will be complemented by an occasional commitment from various other states.

Statistical Analysis of 2010 Recruiting: Part II

Michigan Commitments by State, 2010

This post will be somewhat of a no-brainer for those who follow Michigan recruiting closely, but it helps to visualize where Michigan's recruits hail from.

We can see that Rich Rodriguez intends to keep a strong foothold in the state of Ohio, with 11 of the 27 commitments coming from the Worst State Ever. Michigan has always recruited Ohio, but I don't know of another class that imported so many players from the Buckeye State. Regardless, such greats as Charles Woodson, Elvis Grbac, Desmond Howard, and Ben Mast (what, no love for Ben Mast?) have come north to wear the winged helmet. Some of these relationships were forged by Rodriguez and his staff when they were at West Virginia, which is also in close proximity to Ohio. That's one of the advantages of hiring a coach with some local ties. Despite 10 of those 11 players being only 3-star athletes to Rivals (Jerald Robinson was a 4-star), these commitments should give Rodriguez some inroads to start stealing upper echelon talent out of Ohio.

The Wolverines only secured four commitments out of the ten in-state athletes that received offers (including Ricardo Miller, who moved from Florida to Ann Arbor last summer after committing to Michigan). Unfortunately, there isn't a great deal of talent in Michigan, which is why the state only received the 7th-most offers. I expect that more than ten offers will be given to Michigan players for 2011 (six have already been offered) and I expect that more than four of those offers will be accepted.

Florida and Pennsylvania each contributed three players to the class of 2010. We know that Michigan will continue to hit Florida hard (seven Florida players have received offers for 2011). And with the high rate of success Michigan had in Pennsylvania this past recruiting cycle, the Wolverines will continue to pursue - and catch - Keystone Staters. Pennsylvania might have a bit of a down year in 2011 as far as producing talent, so I don't expect a ton of offers to go there this year, though.

Louisiana is a talent-rich state, but many players in the deep south have a predilection toward staying close to home. One of the main reasons that Michigan was able to pull Carvin Johnson and Drew Dileo out of Louisiana is that both were lightly recruited, at least early on in the process. Johnson started gaining more attention once he committed to Michigan, and his recruiter, Fred Jackson, said he had to work hard on the eve of National Signing Day to keep Johnson committed. Dileo grew up a Michigan fan and picked the Wolverines over the likes of Tulane; I'd pick four years of cold weather over giant hurricanes, too. Michigan will surely continue to recruit Louisiana, but their best chance for success has to be offering those kids early and/or finding sleepers. If a Louisiana native has the choice between going to LSU or out of state, he'll pick LSU most of the time.

Maryland, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin each served up one commitment. Other than Wisconsin, each of those states received between nine and thirteen offers. The kids from Maryland and South Carolina typically show cursory interest in Michigan before committing elsewhere. Other than the two commitments from those two states (Josh Furman and Conelius Jones, respectively), nobody else visited, despite the fact that kids like Zach Zwinak, Marcus Lattimore, and A.J. Cann suggested serious inclinations to consider Michigan early in the process. Texas kids have a lot of options near home, so Michigan mostly has to latch onto under-the-radar kids like Tony Drake and, to a lesser extent, Stephen Hopkins. Wisconsin just doesn't produce much talent, which is why only one kid received an offer - punter Will Hagerup.

Statistical Analysis of 2010 Recruiting: Part I

As you can see by the somewhat muddled pie chart above (click it to enlarge), I've compiled some statistics from the 2010 offer board. I'm no computer expert, so my talents will grow, but bear with me in the meantime. Anyway, this is the beginning of a short series of posts regarding the distribution of Michigan offers.

Throughout the 2010 recruiting cycle, I did my best to keep a running tab on which players throughout the country were offered by Michigan. The list developed by using recruiting sites (Rivals and Scout) and newspaper articles. Not all newspaper articles and recruiting profiles are 100% accurate, but their validity can be hard to verify.

There are some odd examples that should be identified. For example, Jamaal Jackson is a running back from Newark, Delaware. As of February 9, 2010, he has yet to choose a school, but his Rivals profile lists him as having offers from several BCS programs, including Michigan, Boston College, and Rutgers, among others. There's also the case of Travis Williams, a cornerback from Cooper City, Florida. He tried to commit to Michigan in the spring of 2009, but was "encouraged" by Michigan's coaches to weigh all of his options. Williams was never heard from again on Michigan's radar and ended up signing a letter of intent to Miami-OH, but I kept him on the list, as it appears he had been offered by Michigan before the coaches cooled on him.

And then there's cornerback Adrian Witty. Witty was a high school teammate of Denard Robinson's in Deerfield Park, Florida, and committed to Michigan in 2009. However, he failed to qualify and took an evening class in the fall of 2009 in order to enroll for January 2010. He passed the class but was somehow denied admission to Michigan. According to rumor, Rich Rodriguez put in a good word for Witty with new Cincinnati coach Butch Jones, and Witty signed his LOI to play for Cincinnati as a member of the class of 2010. Considering that Michigan's coaches wanted him at Michigan, I also include him on the 2010 Offer Board.

Back to the analysis:

A plurality of offers were extended to recruits from Florida - 46 out of the 190 total offers, in fact. This makes some sense, as Michigan received 7 commitments from the state of Florida in 2009. However, Michigan only secured 3 recruits from Florida in 2010, which is slightly less than 7% of the offers tendered. If Michigan had that kind of success rate nationally, they would need to offer 415 players in order to get 27 commitments.

The Wolverines also made a significant attempts to recruit in Michigan's geographic footprint, with 56 offers going to players from Michigan (10), Ohio (30), Pennsylvania (11), Indiana (3), Illinois (1), and Wisconsin (1). As would be expected, the percentage of commitments from those areas are significantly higher than in Florida; 34% of offered prospects in that midwest section accepted their offers.

A total of 25 offers went to recruits from talent-rich states Georgia and Texas. Only one of those recruits accepted.

Meanwhile, Michigan pursued 10 kids from Maryland, a small but relatively populous state that has excellent football programs with the likes of DeMatha and Our Lady of Good Counsel. One (Josh Furman, from Old Mill High School) accepted.

There was a smattering of other offers, as illustrated by the chart above. But we can see that Michigan is going hard after kids in the Deep South (Florida, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina) and in the Upper Midwest (Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania). Beyond those states, Rich Rodriguez seems to only be making cursory efforts in the Great Plains (A.J. Derby from Iowa), the West Coast (12 from California, 1 from Arizona, 1 from Utah, and none from Oregon or Washington), and the Northeast (such as Dominique Easley from New York and Khairi Fortt from Connecticut). The 12 from California might seem like a high number, until one considers that 48 players from the state were rated 4-stars or higher by Rivals; California is a gold mine of football talent.

We know for certain that Michigan will continue recruiting Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania hard. I also expect the Wolverines to offer more than 10 in-state prospects for the class of 2011; six offers have already been extended.

All coaches' recruiting strategies continue to evolve, and I don't expect anything different from Rich Rodriguez. He was largely unsuccessful in the deep south. I expect that he'll try to make some more inroads in Texas, a perennially talent-rich state, but perhaps ignore Georgia recruiting a bit more. Offers will go where the talent is, but it's a waste of time and resources to recruit heavily in states where the players don't want to leave home, are afraid of playing in cold weather, or have enough traditionally powerful in-state programs to suck up all the local talent.