Recruiting: CPJ vs CCG

coit

coit

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This is something I've been wondering about for some time. Who has recruited better at GT, CPJ or CCG? I think the general concensus is that CCG was a better recruiter, and that CPJ was only successful with Chan's recruits, etc, etc.

Well, I found a set of data from the 247Sports GT page of our Top 250 or so recruits since 2000. I guess that's the home of the Hive, eh?

https://247sports.com/college/georgia-tech/Sport/Football/AllTimeRecruits/

Crunching the numbers as shown in the spreadsheet below, I think the evidence shows the following:
  • The average score of each coach's recruits are essentially equal (0.8634 vs 0.8557)
  • The average rank of each coach's recruits in the Top 247 is essentially equal (125 vs 124.3)
Other evidence indicates that CPJ is a better recruiter:
  • Chan Gailey averaged 9 recruits per year in the Top 250 since 2000
  • Paul Johnson averaged 17.4 recruits per year in the Top 250 since 2000
Now on this basis you can't conclude that CPJ is a better recruiter, and it doesn't account for where our guys rank among the total recruits in the country. But, you can look at the number of players in each group of 25 within the Top 150.

I broke the Top 150 down into 6 groups of 25, and counted the number each coach got within that group. As you can see in the spreadsheet, CPJ averaged 3x as many recruits PER YEAR in each group than CCG did. This means that more of CCG's recruits were in the bottom 100 of that list that I didn't count. CCG narrowly edged CPJ in the Top 25, but only by a margin of 1.67 to 1.18 recruits per year.

This data can be taken with many grains of salt for sure.

EDIT 9/25 AM: I've added an additional pivot table to the data that shows the average for each coach by position. This data uses the recruit's rank by position in their class, which would remove any year over year bias or inflation in the results. By this measure, CCG clearly outrecruits CPJ. We all expect this on the offensive side, but it is easy to see that he fairly well recruits CPJ on the defensive side as well, with the most significant difference is in the DE position. So, by this measure, I think it is easy to understand why we have not been able to put strong defenses on the field in the past 10 years.


 
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How about we use actual performance in college? As in, how many first and second team ACC players did each recruit in their first eight years?
 
originalwombat said:
How about we use actual performance in college? As in, how many first and second team ACC players did each recruit in their first eight years?
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That's a BS stat in my opinion. In 2014 we had zero first-team representatives but took FSU to the wire and won the OB.

If you want to measure performance, we can measure by conference championships and Orange Bowl appearances if you want.
 
How many total 3 and 4 stars were there when CCG did it versus under CPJ? The recruit rankings/stars are more inflated now. I use my eyes to see that our talent is worse relative to our competition versus what it was 10+ years ago.

Also, CCG developed players. Several 2 stars went on to be All-ACC and get drafted. CPJ does not get players drafted. The only sure-fire NFLer on our team today is the punter.
 
JoeCakeEater said:
How many total 3 and 4 stars were there when CCG did it versus under CPJ? The recruit rankings/stars are more inflated now. I use my eyes to see that our talent is worse relative to our competition versus what it was 10+ years ago.

Also, CCG developed players. Several 2 stars went on to be All-ACC and get drafted. CPJ does not get players drafted. The only sure-fire NFLer on our team today is the punter.
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This. When CCG was coach, our 2 star recruits stayed as 2 stars even after committing to us. These days, when we offer kids who only have offers from Sun Belt teams they are automatically bumped up to 3 stars the next day.

I think CCG was much better at identifying talent/the diamonds in the rough as well. We had quite a few 2 star recruits who went on to become NFL players (Wheeler and Vance Walker off the top of my head).

The number of guys drafted by the NFL has dropped significantly since CPJ started bringing in his recruits.
 
What do their win % look like when you take out D2/FCS wins? Should apply losses if available. Not recruiting-related but fairest comparison between coaches in my opinion
 
gtchief said:
What do their win % look like when you take out D2/FCS wins? Should apply losses if available. Not recruiting-related but fairest comparison between coaches in my opinion
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Gailey played UConn a bunch right after they moved up to FBS. Also played Samford a few times. I dunno why people think cupcakes are a new thing.

Also, playing a really bad G5 team isn't substantially different from playing an FCS team.
 
smokey_wasp said:
Gailey played UConn a bunch right after they moved up to FBS. Also played Samford a few times. I dunno why people think cupcakes are a new thing.
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The point is to filter out the rent-a-wins since schedules expanded partway through Gailey's tenure. I just want to know what the meaningful numbers boil down to. Feel free to use P5-only. I'm curious because someone brought up that the average wins/year are almost similar now.
 
coit said:
Orange Bowl Appearances:

CCG - 0
CPJ - 2
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CCGs players in first one, we only got that second orange bowl because the ACC had to have someone since the ACC champ was in the Playoffs.

Don't really give a shit. just :shtstir:
 
How many players named Calvin Johnson did CPJ recruit?
 
h-wade said:
Why did you even create this topic if you already know the answer based on Orange Bowl appearances?

Which by the way.. the first orange bowl appearance was with GAILEY'S recruits.
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I crunched some numbers using a published set of recruit ratings to do a comparative evaluation of CCG and CPJ recruiting. As I expected, people then said well CCG's recruits were better anyway, yada, yada, yada. So I then suggested other measures of each coaches on the field success.

I mean it doesn't really matter who gets drafted when you can look at the actual win/loss records and who won the big game, etc. Why wasn't CCG around to coach in the Orange Bowl with his recruits. Who got curb stomped, by the way.
 
coit said:
Well, I found a set of data from the 247Sports GT page of our Top 250 or so recruits since 2000. I guess that's the home of the Hive, eh?

https://247sports.com/college/georgia-tech/Sport/Football/AllTimeRecruits/

Crunching the numbers as shown in the spreadsheet below, I think the evidence shows the following:
  • The average score of each coach's recruits are essentially equal (0.8634 vs 0.8557)
  • The average rank of each coach's recruits in the Top 247 is essentially equal (125 vs 124.3)
Other evidence indicates that CPJ is a better recruiter:
  • Chan Gailey averaged 9 recruits per year in the Top 250 since 2000
  • Paul Johnson averaged 17.4 recruits per year in the Top 250 since 2000
Now on this basis you can't conclude that CPJ is a better recruiter, and it doesn't account for where our guys rank among the total recruits in the country. But, you can look at the number of players in each group of 25 within the Top 150.

I broke the Top 150 down into 6 groups of 25, and counted the number each coach got within that group. As you can see in the spreadsheet, CPJ averaged 3x as many recruits PER YEAR in each group than CCG did. This means that more of CCG's recruits were in the bottom 100 of that list that I didn't count. CCG narrowly edged CPJ in the Top 25, but only by a margin of 1.67 to 1.18 recruits per year.

This data can be taken with many grains of salt for sure. But anyone that thinks CCG outrecruited CPJ is going to have to prove it.

Click to expand...

I don't accept that these recruiting analysts, who suffer no consequences for being wrong, are better evaluators of talent than are our coaches, whose jobs are on the line if they're wrong.

More to the point, the only things I care about are: (i) beating UGA and (ii) beating everybody else, in that order. And on that metric, CPJ is obviously heads and shoulders above CCG. Really don't understand why we're still talking about a coach no one wanted to keep eleven years after he left, a coach who never won a major bowl, never beat UGA, etc.
 
18in32 said:
Really don't understand why we're still talking about a coach no one wanted to keep eleven years after he left, a coach who never won a major bowl, never beat UGA, etc.
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I wasn't bringing CCG into it because people want him back or something, I doubt anyone has said or thought that. What I was addressing was a few comments I've seen over the past few weeks about how CPJ can't recruit. My point is that he appears to be recruiting significantly better, relatively speaking, than CCG did.

If someone can find information on the 247Sports scoring algorithm that would be interesting, as I have not been able to find it.
 
coit said:
I crunched some numbers using a published set of recruit ratings to do a comparative evaluation of CCG and CPJ recruiting. As I expected, people then said well CCG's recruits were better anyway, yada, yada, yada. So I then suggested other measures of each coaches on the field success.

I mean it doesn't really matter who gets drafted when you can look at the actual win/loss records and who won the big game, etc. Why wasn't CCG around to coach in the Orange Bowl with his recruits. Who got curb stomped, by the way.
Click to expand...

If you're just arguing that CPJ was able to realize a higher ceiling with the players he had, I don't think too many people are going to disagree with you. But that's another question than the on-field talent, which is itself a separate question than recruiting rankings.

We pretty much always had a formidable front 7 under Gailey, whether you want to chalk that up to recruiting, development, or whatever. When has that been the case since Gailey's players left?
 
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