After a bit of a hiatus, we return to our series of articles ranking the VT football recruiting classes from 1990 to the present. This time around, we rank the 1993 recruiting class, and we find that although this class contains the highest-rated recruit in our study so far, it is surprisingly short on depth and reveals something interesting about the 1997 football team.

The crown jewel of the 1993 recruiting class was, of course, Cornell Brown. Back in TSL Extra #20 (June 24, 2002), I rated Cornell the second most influential player of the Beamer Bowl era, behind only Michael Vick. I rated him there primarily because of the impact Cornell had on in-state recruiting:

Brown's dramatic commitment to Tech, which came on signing day and was immediately followed by him signing an LOI to the Hokies, made it cool for highly-ranked in-state prospects to go to Blacksburg. It wasn't just that Brown committed to Tech; it was the playful way he thumbed his nose at the Virginia Cavaliers during his press conference, and the fact that he did it in the wake of a disastrous 1992 campaign (2-8-1) for the Hokies, a nightmare season that led to Beamer clearing out his assistant coaching staff.

Back when the Hokies signed five players from Doughty's top 25 in 1990, Bill Roth wrote in the Hokie Huddler that it was "the most [from the top 25 list] since the early 1980's." That statement is unfathomable these days, and one major reason why is Cornell Brown. He paved the way for state recruits to start coming to Blacksburg, lifting up the Hokie program in the process.

Cornell was also a phenomenal player. On the field, the Hokies could not have asked for anything more. He contributed immediately, and he continued to contribute for his entire four-year career. Tech's rise to prominence began the moment Cornell Brown stepped on campus in the fall of 1993. All the Hokies have done since then is win.

As you'll see, Cornell's accomplishments rocket him to the top of all of our rankings so far, ahead of Jim Pyne, Maurice DeShazo, Antonio Freeman, and Jim Druckenmiller.

But as we'll also see, outside of Cornell Brown, the 1993 recruiting class was nothing special. And the way in which the class was handled -- specifically with regards to redshirts -- explains a lot about why the Hokies struggled on the field five seasons later, in the fall of 1997.

Note: the recruit ranking system was introduced in TSL Extra #21 (July 24, 2002). To learn how it works and how points are awarded, see the Inside the Numbers article from that issue.

In an effort to numerically rate the "success" of a recruiting class, both as individuals and as a team, I created a detailed point system that awards points for individual accomplishments and team accomplishments. I created a large table of "accomplishments" that players and recruiting classes could achieve, and then awarded points to players and classes that achieved those objectives.

Individual players, for example, can earn varsity letters, set records, become All-Americans, and get drafted by the NFL. Recruiting classes can win games, go to bowls, and obtain Top 25 rankings.

Here is a list of how many points are awarded for what accomplishments, both individual and team:

Individual accomplishments: letter earned (1 point); season starter (2 points); VT season stat leader (2); VT game (5), season (7) or career (10) record held; All-American (10); First-team AA (15); Consensus AA (20), Unanimous AA (25); national award (20); Heisman finalist (30); All-Big East 2nd (3) or 1st (5) Team; BE Player of the Year (10); BE season stats leader (5); BE game (6), season (8), or career (11) record held; BE academic honor roll (2); drafted by the NFL (3-10 points).

Class achievements: Wins (2 points per win); conference win (2); win over Virginia (5) or Miami (5); BE Champions (25); Top 25 (10) or Top 10 (15) finish; play in (15) or win (10) minor bowl; play in (25) or win (25) BCS bowl; play in championship game (50).

Note that the reasons for this ranking system, and its strengths and shortcomings, were talked about in detail in TSL Extra issue #21.

As we do for each of these articles, here's a walk-through with Tyronne Drakeford, a key member of the 1990 recruiting class. Here are his accomplishments:

• Lettered, 1990-93 (4 points, 1 for each letter)
• Started, 1991-93 (6 points, 2 for each season)
• Led VT in interceptions, 1991-93 (12 points, 4 points for each season)
• All-Big East 2nd team, 1991 (3 points)
• All-Big East 1st team, 1992-93 (10 points, 5 for each season)
• Led Big East in interceptions, 1992 (5 points)
• Drafted in the second round, 1994 (9 points)

Total points for Tyronne Drakeford: 49

Here's the entire 1993 recruiting class, and how many points each player scored in the TSL Extra system:

Cornell Brown (DE, 116 points): Lettered four years; started four years; consensus All-America in 1995; first-team All-America in 1996 (by Walter Camp); All-Big East 2nd team in 1994; All-Big East 1st team in 1995 and 1996; Big East Defensive Player of the Year in 1995; Big East sack leader in 1995; Big East career record holder in sacks; drafted in the sixth round of the NFL by the Baltimore Ravens; jersey has been retired by VT.

Brandon Semones (LB, 26 points): Lettered four years; started three years; led VT in tackles in 1996; All-Big East 2nd team in 1995 and 1996; Big East All-Academic team in 1994, 1995, and 1996.

Shawn Scales (WR, 16 points): Lettered four years; started two years; led VT in receiving and kickoff returns in 1996.

Bryan Jennings (TE, 13 points): Lettered four years; started two years; All-Big East 1st team in 1996.

Larry Green (DB, 12 points): Lettered four years; started two years; led VT in punt returns in 1995.

In terms of team accomplishments, the 1993 recruiting class wins points for what the team accomplished in the 1993-1996 seasons. These accomplishments are:

The 27.10 per-player average are the best so far among the four recruiting classes reviewed (1990-93). The following paragraphs accumulate the data we've got so far

So far, with three classes in the books, here's how they stack up against each other:

From a pure points standpoint, the 1993 class stands up to the other three recruiting classes very well. But the 1993 class was very shallow and only had one true superstar in it, Cornell Brown.

One good way to measure the 1993 class against the others is to look at the #2-rated player in the '93 class, Brandon Semones, and compare him to the other classes. Semones scored 26 points, and whereas the 1993 class only had one player score more than that (Brown), the 1990 class had five players score higher than that; the 1991 class had three; and the 1992 class had four higher than 26 points.

Here are some other benchmarks:

You can see that in nearly every category, the 1993 class came up short of the other classes. Looking at the number of players who either didn't letter or lettered only once, an astounding sixty percent of the 1993 recruiting class contributed either nothing or very little to the team.

As an aside, it's interesting to note that the 1990 recruiting class scored highest in all of the categories listed in the table. The further we get into this analysis, the more impressive the 1990 recruiting class gets.

By now, you know the nasty story of the 1997 Hokies. They started out 4-0, reached a #12 ranking, and then swooned, going 3-5 over their last 8 games and losing their last three by a combined score of 106-46, including a 42-3 pasting by UNC in the Gator Bowl.

A look at this 1993 recruiting class reveals part of the problem with the 1997 Hokies. The success of any team is dependent in large part to its redshirt seniors, and the 1993 recruiting class contributed almost no redshirt seniors to the 1997 team.

A look at the depth chart in the 1997 football preseason issue of the Hokie Huddler reveals just four -- only four -- redshirt seniors from the 1993 recruiting class listed among the 46 players in the two-deep of the 1997 football team (22 offensive players, 22 defensive players, and 2 kickers).

That's astounding. It's as if an entire recruiting class disappeared. The four players from this class who were listed in the preseason two-deep in 1997 were tight end Sean Sullivan, flanker Shawn Scales, whip linebacker Korey Irby, and cornerback Larry Green. Scales was the only true impact player among those four, and when he went down in game 5 against Miami of Ohio with an injury, the team went down with him.

On a related note, the two-deep in 1997 included four other redshirt seniors, all of whom were walk-ons: WR Michael Stuewe, DE Danny Wheel, DT Kerwin Hairston, and LB Steve Tate. All of them were starters. While that's a tribute to the VT walk-on program, it's also a sign that something went wrong in recruiting, when roster holes had to be filled with walk-ons.

This is not to belittle those players; Hairston made All-Big East first team in 1997, and Tate made second team and led the Hokies in tackles. But none of the four redshirt-senior walk-ons in 1997 were of the same caliber as walk-on poster child John Engelberger, who is playing in the NFL today. And again, the fact that all four were counted on as starters as redshirt seniors says as much about the 1993 recruiting class -- only in a bad way -- as it does about those four players.

Of course, another reason the class of 1993 didn't contribute many redshirt seniors to the 1997 football team is that the best of the 1993 class didn't redshirt. Cornell Brown, Brandon Semones, and Bryan Jennings all played as true freshmen in 1993 and were gone after the 1996 season. Even Larry Green started as a true freshman in 1993; the only reason he was around in 1997 was because he sat out the 1996 season due to academic difficulties.

Of the top five players from this class -- Brown, Semones, Scales, Jennings, and Green -- only one redshirted in 1993, and that was Scales.

That tactic helped the 1995 and 1996 teams win the Big East. Brown, Semones, and Jennings in particular were big contributors to Tech's Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl teams. But the Hokies paid dearly for it on the "back end" when those players were not available in 1997.

Four classes into our rankings now, here is our top ten list. From this class, only Cornell Brown cracked the top ten, and he shot straight to the top.

The 1990 class is still well-represented in the top ten, with four players. 1991 has three in the top ten, 1992 has two, and 1993 has one.

See you next installment, when we rate a 1994 recruiting class that included two players among the top five in the state of Virginia, the first time the Hokies had pulled that feat since 1978. They were Ken Oxendine and Tony Morrison, and to say that their Tech careers went in different directions is an understatement.

To download the data in HTML (web page) format, go here:

http://subscription.techsideline.com/tslpass/2002/1993RecruitingClass.htm

To download an MS Excel 97 spreadsheet containing all of the data and formulas that I have used here, go here:

http://subscription.techsideline.com/tslpass/2002/1993RecruitingClass.xls

Related Articles

• The Recruiting Ranking System Explained
• Rating the 1990 Recruiting Class
• Rating the 1991 Recruiting Class
• Rating the 1992 Recruiting Class
  

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