By Last Updated on July 25, 2012
Have you ever wondered if a relationship exists between the money spent on football recruitment and the subsequent recruiting class rank? In this post, we look at the top 25 public schools in both recruiting expenditures and recruiting class rank, as reported by Rivals.com. These numbers are from 2010-2011 NCAA financial disclosures and 2011 recruiting classes.
This first chart shows the top 25 public schools in recruiting expenditures for the year 2011. As you can see, the expenditures range from $1,135,211 to $433, 236, yet the class ranks range from 1st in the county to 118th.
| School | Recruiting | Class Rank |
| Tennessee | $1,135,211 | 13 |
| Alabama-Tuscaloosa | $980,882 | 1 |
| Auburn | $950,378 | 7 |
| Georgia Tech | $883,430 | 41 |
| Arkansas | $666,419 | 24 |
| Georgia | $623,224 | 5 |
| Texas Tech | $611,910 | 20 |
| Florida | $602,929 | 12 |
| Oregon | $590,683 | 9 |
| Boise State | $589,773 | 53 |
| UNC | $580,200 | 16 |
| Texas | $577,976 | 3 |
| Michigan | $577,663 | 21 |
| New Mexico | $545,867 | 81 |
| Illinois | $545,363 | 42 |
| Army | $511,840 | 118 |
| Mississippi | $495,233 | 19 |
| Memphis | $493,204 | 65 |
| Clemson | $490,305 | 8 |
| Nebraska | $478,554 | 15 |
| Colorado | $470,355 | 74 |
| Iowa State | $448,777 | 51 |
| Kansas | $442,911 | 34 |
| Washington | $440,931 | 23 |
| Florida State | $433,236 | 2 |
This second chart shows the top 25 class ranks, with their respective recruiting expenses.
| School | Class Rank* | Recruiting Expense |
| Alabama-Tuscaloosa | 1 | $980,882 |
| Florida State | 2 | $433,236 |
| Texas | 3 | $577,976 |
| Georgia | 5 | $623,224 |
| Louisiana State | 6 | $302,882 |
| Auburn | 7 | $950,378 |
| Clemson | 8 | $490,305 |
| Oregon | 9 | $590,683 |
| Ohio State | 11 | $320,938 |
| Florida | 12 | $602,929 |
| Tennessee | 13 | $1,135,211 |
| Oklahoma | 14 | $356,414 |
| Nebraska | 15 | $478,554 |
| Berkeley | 17 | $394,298 |
| South Carolina | 18 | $132,758 |
| Mississippi | 19 | $495,233 |
| Texas Tech | 20 | $611,910 |
| Michigan | 21 | $577,663 |
| Washington | 23 | $440,931 |
| Arkansas | 24 | $666,419 |
| Virginia | 25 | $276,806 |
Both charts show that, at present, there is no real relationship between how much a school spends on recruitment, and how high their recruiting class ranks. For instance, even though Florida State had the 2nd best recruiting class in the nation, they were only ranked 25th in recruiting expenditures. Yet, Army, which only had the 118th best recruiting class amongst public schools, actually spent about 1.18 times more on recruiting than Florida State did.
*Omitted Class Ranks belong to Private Schools (USC-4, Notre Dame-10, Stanford-22)
Editor’s Note: There has been some confusion over why these numbers differ from previous posts, which used Department of Education data filed by each school. Those reports show recruiting in two categories: male and female. The numbers in this post are football-specific and obtained from NCAA disclosures filed by each school and obtained through public records requests.
Jeff Roy
July 25, 2012Alicia Jessop has stated, on several occasions, this is Dept. of Education data and the accounting “standards” used by the athletic departments may be anything but. So while this makes for interesting reading, Lauren, they do not tell the whole story.
bcsguestwriter
July 25, 2012Editors note: These are not numbers from Department of Education (EADA) reports. These are from NCAA disclosures filed by each school. EADA reports only show recruiting expenses as male and female totals. NCAA disclosures have it broken down by sport, so these numbers are football only and considered the most accurate available.
Dr. Darin White
July 30, 2012Actually the data does show some correlation. I ran a bivariate correlation analysis on the data and found a -.296 pearson correlation which is significant at the .15 level. @Sports_Biz_Prof
D.A.
August 2, 2012Comparing money spent on recruiting compared to a Rivals ranking seems to be an incorrect metric. The success of the recruiting class is not immediately seen, but is well known within four or five seasons after said recruiting class enrolls and plays so one can measure W/L.