In the first two articles we looked at Tech’s overall recruiting, first in head-to-head competition and second by location. Tech has an impressive record head-to-head against the recruiting competition and obviously does very well in-state, but are the Hokies landing the top recruits on their board and fulfilling their positional needs? How does Virginia Tech do for the top players as opposed to lesser recruited players? Now that Tech is in the ACC, are the Hokies recruiting a higher-caliber player? This article will attempt to address these questions and more.

Another aspect to the statistics shown in the previous two articles is to look at the total number of offers per player that Tech has offered. In other words, we can answer the question of how heavily recruited the players were that Tech offered. The following table shows the average number of offers from all colleges for players with a Virginia Tech offer for the last four years:

Obviously, since Tech was accepted into the ACC two years ago, the caliber of player being recruited has increased (assuming that the number of offers for a player is correlated to his ability). The Hokies are now facing more competition in recruiting than ever before, but how is Tech doing signing these more heavily recruited players? The following table shows the average number of offers for players signing with Virginia Tech for the last four years:

From this data we can clearly see that Tech is not having as much success for the more heavily recruited players that the Hokies have offered, as evidenced by the fact that the average offers per signee (6.7) is less than the average offers per recruit offered (11.5). The encouraging news is that last year’s recruits were easily the most heavily recruited class of the last four years, so Tech’s membership in the ACC and winning their first football championship obviously paid dividends last year.

So, why is Tech unable to sign a higher percentage of heavily recruited players? Are most of these players out-of-state and Tech’s regional advantage in recruiting negated? Does Tech tend to offer a greater number of “lesser” recruited players in Virginia as opposed to out-of-state? The following table may provide some of these answers. This table represents the average number of offers per state for the last four years. I have added the percentage signed information from Table 1 in the second article to look at the possible inverse correlation between number of offers and likelihood of signing.

From this data we can clearly see that Tech offers a broader number of players in Virginia than in other states (assuming that a proportional amount of talent exists in Virginia and that other schools recruit Virginia as hard as other states). The average out-of-state recruit for Virginia Tech has 13.2 offers as opposed to just 7.0 in Virginia. Also, a correlation appears to exist between distance from Blacksburg and the number of offers. In other words, Virginia Tech tends to recruit more sought after players in areas outside of the Hokies’ normal recruiting territory. However, a question remains with regards to this data. Could the averages be skewed by a heavily recruited player, i.e., could one player with a large number of offers distort the results?

To better understand the distribution of recruiting data, I have divided the recruits into four groups based on number of offers: (1) 20 or more offers; (2) 10-19 offers; (3) 5-9 offers; and (4) 1-4 offers. Generally, I have found the dividing line between “national” recruits and “regional” recruits is about 10 offers, so I set these groupings based upon this generalization. The following table shows Virginia Tech’s recruiting success for each of these four groups for the last four years:

By analyzing Virginia Tech’s recruiting by offer level, several conclusions can be reached. In the state of Virginia, the Hokies sign about half of the recruits offered that have five or more offers. Oddly, Tech’s success with more heavily recruited players in Virginia is about the same regardless of the number of total offers received by the player. In other words, Tech’s success recruiting Virginia does not decrease proportionately with an increase in offers for a recruit. Also, the Hokies are extremely successful for players with four or fewer offers (84% in-state and 57% out-of-state). In case you wondered, only six players had just an offer from Virginia Tech (all from Virginia), so single offer recruits are not skewing the results.

Tech’s recruiting success for out-of-state players that are heavily recruited seems more logical with the signing percentage decreasing proportionately with an increase in the number of offers for a recruit. However, a wide disparity exists between the success rate for heavily recruited players (7.9% signing rate for players with five or more offers) and lesser recruited players (57.1% signing rate for players with four or less offers).

In short, Virginia Tech has experienced considerable success in recruiting the state of Virginia, but the Hokies have had limited success in recruiting highly sought after players from outside of the state. However, just measuring the overall success rate of recruiting does not necessarily answer the question of how well individual team needs are being met. For example, if a team recruits a large number of standout linebackers but fails to recruit quality defensive linemen, is that team successful even though their signing success rate might be very high? To fully understand recruiting success, we need to evaluate how positional needs are being met as well.

The following table breaks down Virginia Tech’s overall success in signing specific positions over the last four years. Note that the positions listed for a recruit are the most likely position to be played for VT as indicated in recruiting reports and not necessarily the position that eventually was played.

Looking just at the signing percentages, Tech appears to have the most success recruiting defensive backs and defensive tackles with the least success recruiting quarterbacks, defensive ends, and running backs. However, these results do not measure how heavily recruited the players for each position are, so we have no way of knowing if Tech may have elite recruits at quarterback or running back. To better analyze the positional recruiting, I have broken down the recruiting by level of offers as presented in Table 4. The following table provides a positional summary of Virginia Tech’s recruiting by the four groupings of offers received by a player.

Overall Tech appears to be fairly balanced in recruiting positions with one exception – offensive line. The Hokies have only landed three highly recruited offensive linemen in the last four years. The most surprising position has to be quarterback with four heavily recruited signal callers inking with Tech in the last four years. Normally I would like to see a “two-deep” signed with highly recruited players (five or more offers) and at least one elite player (ten or more offers) every four years. Based on these criteria only four positions come up short: Offensive line, which is short on both depth and quality; Fullback, which is not surprising since few high school fullbacks are highly recruited; Defensive Back, which lacks sufficient depth; and Punter/Place Kicker, which are seldom heavily recruited. Note that these four positions are probably the least recruited out of high school, so the results are not surprising, i.e., OL, FB, DB, and P/PK probably have the fewest offers of any position in high school in proportion to college team needs.

Of course, just recruiting quality athletes is meaningless if the players do not stay on the team. Six of the 38 highly recruited players in the last four years are no longer on the squad. Twelve of these players are currently on the two-deep in the latest depth chart and eleven are in the last recruiting class, thus only nine heavily-recruited players have yet to crack the two-deep (six of these players are in their second year).

Of course, rating players just by offers cannot be conclusive since many players may not have numerous offers for several valid reasons. Some players, such as Aaron Rouse, committed early, though Rouse certainly would have had greater than five offers while other players, such as Jimmy Williams, were academically questionable, thus limiting the number of official offers. A small number of players, such as Xavier Adibi, were not highly recruited because many colleges thought their destination was known (“silent verbal”) and did not want to expend the effort and resources for a recruit that had little chance of signing with their school.

To give some idea of the predictability of heavily recruited players contributing at Virginia Tech, I have provided the latest two-deep depth chart and the players’ recruiting level:

As you can clearly see, the majority of Tech’s two-deep has not been heavily recruited. Historically, Virginia Tech has done an excellent job at finding “diamonds in the rough,” such as Darryl Tapp, and developing walk-ons, such as Will Montgomery. However, if you look at the “impact” players for Tech, the vast majority was highly recruited or there was a reason, such as academics, that they were not offered by a lot of schools.

The areas of the depth chart that fans tend to question the most are generally manned by lesser recruited players. When looking at Tech’s total roster, I only see one player, D.J. Walton, that was heavily recruited that has had a disappointing career to date, and he is in contention for the two-deep. Other players, such as Tripp Carroll, have had injury concerns that have curtailed their progress, or are still developing (John Kinzer).

Fans will endlessly debate the value of recruiting ratings, but in my opinion a clear relationship exists between highly recruited players and impact on the football field. Ultimately, the success of any recruiting class is measured by the productivity of the players, but the correlation between the recruiting level and the likelihood of later success on the field has been proven to be fairly high.