Recruiting

Recruiting is a big part of college football because there is a strong correlation between recruiting well and playing well. Alabama has won 4 championships in the past 7 years, and they have also had the number one recruiting class in the nation for six straight years. That doesn't mean that just because a team recruits well that they will automatically play well. Teams like USC, Texas, Miami, and Penn State have had consistent top 25 recruiting classes but over the past 2 years they have had records of 14-12 (Miami), 14-12 (Penn State), 11-14 (Texas), and 17-10 (USC). So it definitely isn't a guarantee that a team will win just because they have better recruits. However it is true that the SEC is the best conference for college football but they also recruit very well throughout the conference. In the 2016 class there were around 10 SEC teams in the top 25 of the rankings, 12 in 2015, and 10 in 2014. Compared to the Big 10 who had 5 teams in the top 25 in 2016, 3 in 2015 , 4 in 2014. That just has to get better if the Big 10 wants to improve. But the problem is that the Big 10 has to try a lot harder and spend a lot more money to recruit on the level of the SEC teams, and even some of the Big 12, and ACC, and Pac-12 teams. This is because the states that have the best recruits are Florida, Georgia, Texas, and California. So many SEC teams pull their recruits from Georgia and Florida and don't have to spend too much money to recruit them. Pac-12 teams can recruit from California, which is probably the 2nd best recruiting states in the nation. Which brings me to the top recruiting states in the nation, Texas, which is where many Big 12 schools pull their recruits from, and also some SEC schools, like LSU, Texas A&M, and Arkansas. But in general Big 10 schools have to travel farther to reach good recruits. States like Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Minnesota just don't produce high level recruits like southern states do.

Despite all of this Big 10 schools, like my own team, Iowa, need to recruit better. It is necessary to compete with all the other schools. The Big 10 and schools like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nebraska should be dominating the recruitment of offensive and defensive line prospects. All of those schools are known for producing top linemen, people like Marshal Yanda, Travis Frederick, J.J. Watt, Mike Daniels, Ndamukong Suh, and Brandon Scherff. Yet in 2016 many of the top offensive line recruits went to schools known for producing skill position players rather than lineman.