Welcome to “I Got 5 On It”, each week I’ll be picking five news-worthy subjects based around college football to cover. Ranging from views on Devy prospects, general college football talk, interesting stats, and a little bit of hip-hop music mixed in now and then.
1. Which Schools Actually Develop Their Talent?
An interesting idea popped in my head as I was waiting for the grill to warm up on the 4th of July. I’m sure this isn’t an original idea and somewhere along the lines somebody else has done this work previously but what’s a good way to gage a university’s ability to develop high-end NFL Draft talent? Using an NFL Draft Trade Value Chart to weight every NFL Draft selection from the last ten years and tallying up the points for each school.
Having a top five overall selection on your school’s resume can really inflate your ranking with this method. Central Michigan is still riding on the coattails of Eric Fisher going 1.01. They rank just inside the top 50 overall schools despite only having one top 150 selection in the last ten years other than Fisher. Alabama is lapping the field like they have in any other CFB category in the last ten years. If you combine Ohio State and Oklahoma’s draft selections over the last ten years they barely topple the Crimson Tide. It’s really not even fair, Alabama accounts for five of the ten best draft classes over the last ten years. Alabama’s last two draft classes both clock into the top four classes of the past decade.
The thing that really intrigues me about this exercise is looking at where each school ranked recruiting wise and how they developed that talent into NFL prospects. The first school that sticks out is Georgia. They are widely considered underachievers, coming in as the 3rd best recruiters in the last ten years but only producing the 9th most NFL talent. Other underachievers like USC, Texas, and Tennessee all lost value over the ten-year span. The Longhorns being amongst the worst in the entire country, bringing in the 10th most talent and spitting out the 45th most talent for the NFL Draft. One of the most shocking examples of underachieving is Nebraska. In the last five years, the ‘Huskers have brought in the 21st best recruiting classes and produced 129th most talent for the NFL Draft. Over the last five years, Oregon State, Kansas, Nebraska, Arizona, and Georgia Tech have produced the least amount of draft capital for a P5 school.
Now looking at the schools that get the most talent out of their recruits. Schools that all traditionally recruit inside of the top 15 annually Florida, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Oregon have done the best job of getting the most out of their talent. Either through great scouting of underrated recruits or just top notch development. The P5 school that gives the biggest bang for their buck in recruiting is Iowa. They rank 46th in recruiting but they produce the 19th most NFL talent. Outside of Iowa, Boston College and Louisville are the highest-ranking P5 schools in developing NFL talent. They are followed by Illinois, West Virginia, Stanford, and Washington. Over the past five years, BYU, Houston, Western Michigan, Temple, and UCF have produced the most G5 draft capital. Most of which are propped up by a single player being drafted extremely high (Zach Wilson, Ed Oliver, Corey Davis, and Hassan Reddick). Zach Wilson accounts for 78% of BYU’s score over the last five years.
2. Who’s Improving At Recruiting?
As I was doing my research above, I found it interesting which schools have improved/lost ground in recruiting over the last ten years.
The first school that jumps out is Florida State. From 2012-2016 they ranked 3rd only behind Alabama and Ohio State in cumulative recruiting points but from 2017-2021 they fell all the way down to 17th overall. One of the biggest drops in all of P5, UCLA also dropped 14 spots in the same span. Easily the most among schools who recruit in the top 25 range. Following in FSU’s footsteps, both USC and Auburn both slide 8 spots. Both hampered by a single poor class in the last two years. USC with a horrid 2020 class and Auburn’s 2021 class was heavily affected by a coaching change. The difference in being ranked 6th and 16th was less than 100 points, very slim margins in that range. The P5 schools that have seen the biggest dip in the last five years belong to UCLA, Florida State, Oregon State, Arizona, and Texas Tech. Out of the ten biggest losers, the PAC12 accounts for four of the spots. Not a great sign for the struggling conference.
Schools like Clemson, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Oregon all jumped at least five spots and slid into the top ten over the past five years. Others that have seen a steady bump are Miami, Penn State, Washington, North Carolina, and Nebraska. P5ers that have seen the biggest bump in the past five years are Purdue, Maryland, Wisconsin, Utah, and Colorado. Interestingly enough, three of those schools have recently seen a bump after the latest round of conference realignment. Maryland, Utah, and Colorado might finally be benefiting from increased revenue from realignment. The Big Ten actually accounts for five of the ten biggest movers. Those giant BTN checks look to be paying off on the recruiting trail. Two of the biggest movers for G5 schools are UTSA and Georgia State. I think both schools are on the edge of breaking out in their conferences and developing into powers in the CUSA and Sun Belt respectively.
3. Recent NFL Draft Success
Looking at more recent trends we can see which schools are producing more top NFL Draft prospects over the last five years.
Clemson jumped from 13th to 5th in recruiting, so logically they got a nice bump in producing NFL talent. They jumped from 10th to 4th. Just like Clemson, OU has seen an increase in recruiting and that’s paid off in producing NFL prospects. Having Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray both going 1.01 doesn’t hurt your ranking either. It’s pretty shocking to see Michigan as one of the biggest movers over the last five years. Getting Rashan Gary, Devin Bush, and Jabrill Peppers as high first-round picks is driving a lot of their success. Fellow Big Ten East rival Penn State has garnered high picks in Saquon Barkley, Micah Parsons, and Jayson Oweh to leap up the ranks. Despite not having a big uptick in recruiting, Mark Stoops at Kentucky has steadily produced more NFL Draft talent.
Oregon and Texas A&M both have seen upticks in recruiting while producing less NFL Draft talent than previously. Not having highly drafted players like Dion Jordan and Marcus Mariota has knocked the Ducks down but that’ll change in 2022 with Kayvon Thibodeaux. As Florida State continues its downward trend in recruiting, its NFL Draft talent has plummeted. Nebraska’s NFL production is nearly dead. They fell from 43rd to 105th in the most recent five years! Georgia Tech’s triple option has prevented any development for the NFL Draft. They’ve only totaled 16 points over the last five draft classes. By far the worst for any P5 school and only topping a handful of G5 schools. Early in the Mike Dantonio era, he was producing some high-end NFL Draft talent but his recruiting and development dropped off majorly over the last five years. MSU looks like one of the walking dead P5 schools right now. A downward trend all across the board.
4. Rising Senior Spotlight
The North Carolina native is currently ranked as 247s 10th RB in the nation. He currently has a top group of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio State, and Penn State. Due to COVID, Omarion Hampton’s junior season took place this spring. He was limited to five games due to an ankle injury. In five games Hampton tallied 58-685-13 (11.8 YPC) that’s coming off a monster sophomore season of 250-2402-35 and over 200 receiving yards. As a freshman (2018) ran an 11.54 100-meter dash.
Hampton is listed at 6’ and 215lbs, that weight looks to be a bit exaggerated. Hampton has a nice frame with a lot of room to bulk his body up. There’s only a handful of clips from his junior year so far but he looks to have added some good weight. In his sophomore film, Hampton looks to have above-average speed. He doesn’t really pull away from defenders as much as I’d like to see. Hampton runs with good power, shows ample ability to break arm tackles. The competition that Hampton just doesn’t look very good. Hampton is just simply better than his competition.
In five games in 2020, Hampton only caught one ball. I’d like to see more evidence that he’s able to be an asset in the passing game. Haven’t seen on film that Hampton is able to make defenders miss. He’s either powering through a tackle or just simply running past a defender. And I don’t think Hampton is just going to blow past a lot of defenders at the college level. He’s going to have to figure out a different way to defeat defenders in college.
Hampton has some nice upside but he’s got some work to do to his game. I think once Hampton gets into a college weight program he can blossom into a better athlete. His high school coach claims he runs a 4.38 40 at 220lbs, those claims aren’t backed up on film that I’ve seen. But so far there are only about 6 clips from his junior film this Spring.
5. Freshman Spotlight
Moving forward until next fall, when we have some game action again, I’ll be highlighting an incoming freshman each week in the 5 spot. Harrison Wallace is another prospect that 247 caught onto while the other recruiting services lagged behind. Wallace was rated as the 35th best receiver by 247 while the industry average has him sitting at 72nd (hence why he’s so low on this list, it’s ordered by the Composite ranks). Wallace was a one-time Duke commit before blowing up during his senior season of high school. He earned offers from Maryland, Penn State, South Carolina, and Tennessee after a 27-696-7 (25.8 YPC) in 2020.
” One of the things that really got us excited about him is if you watch his basketball tape and his dunks, he and Lonnie [White] could have a dunk contest against each other, which would be really exciting to watch. And to me, I’ve always felt like wide receivers and DBs that can play basketball, as well as football, and do it at a high level [is a good predictor for success] — the body control, the ball skills, all those types of things.
When we got a chance to watch his tape, as well as talk to a lot of people out there that had seen him live [it verified some things]. For us, probably more so than a lot of places, we’re a big testing numbers program. So being able to get guys in camp, whether they’re underclassmen or seniors and being able to get true testing numbers.”
Wallace is an effortless athlete. It makes it all look so easy. He’s got good speed and athleticism and can leap out of the building. I love the combination of Lonnie White and Harrison Wallace for Penn State.
Outlook: Wallace has a lot of upside just like his fellow classmate Lonnie White Jr. The Nittany Lions hit a home run with his duo. Now they just need a quarterback. Wallace is worth a C2C roster spot, the lack of a QB for PSU has me concerned for his upside on the Campus side, but Wallace has NFL upside.
