Every coach that takes the podium in his introductory presser talks about “building a fence around the state” when it comes to recruiting, but I often wonder which coaches actually deliver on that message.
Well this tweet, from Saturday Down South editor-in-chief Christopher Smith shined some light on that, with a very interesting (and very specific) qualifier: Which SEC head coach signed the highest percentage of in-state top 10 talent this past recruiting cycle?
% of in-state top 10 that top SEC coaches sign on avg.:
Miles 65.8%
Bielema 57.5%
Saban 53%
Jones 40%
Stoops 35%
Freeze 34%
Malzahn 32.5%— Christopher Smith (@csmithSEC) February 15, 2016
Here's the rest (forgot Mullen in first tweet)
Mullen 42.5%
Odom 30%*
McElwain 20%
Smart 20%
Muschamp 20%
Sumlin 18%
Mason 13.3%— Christopher Smith (@csmithSEC) February 15, 2016
While you definitely want to keep in-state recruits at home, you REALLY want to keep the top 10 talent within state borders at your program, and according to Chris Smith’s research, Les Miles and his staff did a better job of that than any other SEC program.
Now, there are clearly a lot of factors that go into each of these numbers – because it’s pretty far fetched to expect head coaches in Texas and Florida to grab 60% of the top 10 talent in their state when everyone and their mother is recruiting the hell out of it, while that will simply never be the case in Arkansas – but the numbers are interesting nonetheless.
It would be very interesting to see this same research for the rest of the Power Five to see what other conclusions we could draw on them as a whole.
