Everything that follows is based on 247 Sports composite ratings and rankings recognizing all their widely-acknowledged limitations. GIGO.

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1 Position percentiles This was originally conceived as a post for the Rivals Cardinal Sports Report/Farm Report forum, but it got way too long. It is about assessing recruits, not on their absolute level of talent nor on how valuable they are to the team, but rather on where they rank in the distribution of available recruits at their respective positions. Are we getting our share of the available talent at each position? Everything that follows is based on 247 Sports composite ratings and rankings recognizing all their widely-acknowledged limitations. GIGO. The 247 composite rating purports to be a cardinal measure of talent, but it doesn t tell us where the recruit falls in the range of available talent at the position. The position-specific distributions for some positions are higher than for others by almost any measure of location, such as mean, median, or nth percentile (although the differences are not as great as I had expected). Position ranks are not the answer. How do I compare a safety with a position rank of 22 (Reid) with a TE with the same position rank (Breeland, Oregon)? The P-12 signs 65 percent more safeties than TE s, so that has to be taken into account in comparing recruits. Further, about 12 percent of the 247 Sports position ranks appear to be incorrect (more on this later). So to get a measure of what I was after, I computed percentiles based on composite ratings for each position. I extracted 247 composite data from the 78 commit web pages corresponding to the past 6 years ( ) for the P-12 teams and Notre Dame Stanford and our frequent opponents and computed position percentiles based on composite ratings for all 1802 signees. In the Reid vs. Breeland example, Justin Reid s composite rating (.8857) falls at the 78 th percentile for safeties, meaning his rating was higher than 78 percent of the 134 safeties signed by these 13 teams over the 6-year period. Jacob Breeland s rating (.8600) falls at the 62 nd percentile among the 81 TE s that signed. The 1802 recruits in this dataset serve as a proxy for the available talent. If you intend to keep reading, here are a few things to know: (1) 247 composite ratings range from.7000 to (yes, at least one player, Rashan Gary, who signed with Michigan in 2016, received a perfect rating). For recruits with no composite rating, I arbitrarily assigned a rating of.1000 so they would sort in the correct order for purposes of computing percentiles. (2) In the tables and in the remainder of this document ratings are displayed without the decimal point: 8123 rather than (3) Unless otherwise noted, all numbers are for the 6-year period (4) I computed non-integer star ratings from composite ratings by interpolating between the lowest and highest ratings for each star count. For example, the range of ratings for 3-stars was , so a rating of 8220, which is 1/4 of the way between 7960 and 8990, gets a star rating of Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 1 27 Februray 2017

2 (5) The web site has an Excel spreadsheet containing all the data plus a lot of tables and sorted lists in addition to what is in this document. In the unlikely event that anybody wants to see more, click on the Download all position percentile files button. I was surprised to find composite position ranks inconsistent with composite ratings (for one position for one year) for 208 of the 1755 recruits that had non-missing ranks. For example, here are the APB s signed in 2012 (by all 13 teams): Pos Name Pos Rating Stars Rank Team Year Barry J. Sanders APB LSJU 2012 KeiVarae Russell APB ND 2012 Robert Lewis APB WSU 2012 Theron West APB WSU 2012 < Ahmaad Harris APB UCLA 2012 Either Theron West s rank is wrong or his rating is wrong. I guessed that 247 would be more likely to neglect to correct the position rank of a mediocre recruit than they would be to mess up the rating of a high-end recruit, so in the 208 cases like this, I retained the composite rating for purposes of computing percentiles. At least it s nice for Theron West; he can brag to his friends that he was the number 2 rated APB Distribution of bad position ranks by team ARIZ 16 ASU 40 CAL 21 CU 16 LSJU 0 ND 0 OREG 14 OSU 31 UCLA 4 USC 6 UTAH 33 WASH 4 WSU 23 Lots of lists and tables follow. Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 2 27 Februray 2017

3 Recruit counts by position WR 221 OT 177 CB 168 S 134 OLB 120 DT 115 ATH 111 OG 111 SDE 100 WDE 93 RB 87 TE 81 ILB 68 PRO 63 APB 40 DUAL 34 OC 24 K 22 P 13 LS 10 FB 10 Tot The next 2 tables provide rough measures of the variability of rating distributions across positions. From the first table, 31.4 percent of PRO recruits were rated 9000 or higher, compared with only 13.5 percent of SDE recruits. None of the 10 FB s had a rating as high as I would like to hear (read) opinions of board gurus on the extent to which these differences reflect differences in projected effectiveness of recruits in playing their positions. Is an 80th-percentile WDE (rating 8807) likely to be as effective in his position as an 80th-percentile ILB (rating 9092) is in his (second table)? Position percentiles corresponding to a composite rating of 9000 (all teams) PRO 68.6 APB 70.5 OT 76.4 DUAL 76.4 ILB 77.6 WR 77.7 CB 77.8 OLB 78.9 RB 79.2 TE 79.4 ATH 80.9 OC 82.3 OG 83.4 DT 83.9 S 84.6 WDE 85.9 SDE 86.5 FB zilch Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 3 27 Februray 2017

4 80th percentiles by position (all teams) Position Rating Stars PRO APB DUAL ILB CB OT OLB WR RB TE ATH OG DT OC S SDE WDE FB K P LS The next table shows the percentage of each team s recruits that ranked at the 80 th percentile or higher, by position percentile. The pecking order is not surprising, but our poor sisters are poorer than I had imagined. The recent performances of Utah, WSU, and especially Colorado, are remarkable considering what, judging by 247 ratings, has been their limited raw material. Percent of recruits at least 80th percentile Team recruits By position percentile By overall percentile USC ND LSJU UCLA OREG WASH ASU CAL ARIZ OSU UTAH CU WSU All Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 4 27 Februray 2017

5 Player with highest position percentile for each team Nat Pos Pos All Name Pos Ratg Strs Rnk Rnk Team Year Pctl Pctl Taj Griffin APB OREG Arik Armstead ATH OREG Iman Marshall CB USC Eddie Vanderdoes DT UCLA Brandon Wimbush DUAL ND Ryan McDaniel FB WASH Nyles Morgan ILB ND JJ Molson K UCLA John Shannon LS ND Tristen Hoge OC ND Chuma Edoga OG USC Jaylon Smith OLB ND Foster Sarell OT LSJU Alex Kinney P CU Max Browne PRO USC Thomas Tyner RB OREG Shaq Thompson S WASH Canton Kaumatule SDE OREG Colby Parkinson TE LSJU Jaelan Phillips WDE UCLA Demetris Robertson WR CAL Note: No player has a percentile as high as Jaelen Phillips has an overall percentile greater than 99.95, which rounds up to for display. The next 4 tables provide rough measures of Stanford s relative success in recruiting at each position. The tables combine positions, as follows: QB = PRO, DUAL OL = OT, OG, OC LB = ILB, OLB RB = RB, APB DB = S, CB DL = DT, SDE, WDE The tables do not include the special teams positions K, P, LS. The positions ATH, TE, and WR are not combined with any other positions. For want of a better term, I have dubbed this grouping of positions mixed positions, as they consist of both combined positions and original positions. Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 5 27 Februray 2017

6 Stanford mean and median mixed position percentiles Position Mean Median QB RB TE DB DL LB OL ATH WR Stanford Recruits above 70th mixed position percentile Position n n above Percent above QB TE RB DB DL LB OL ATH WR Stanford Recruits above 80th mixed position percentile Position n n above Percent above QB RB TE LB OL DL ATH WR DB Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 6 27 Februray 2017

7 Stanford Recruits above 90th mixed position percentile Position n n above Percent above QB TE RB OL DB LB WR DL ATH The relationship between composite rating and position percentile for any position is nonlinear and not very smooth. The next table facilitates estimation of the position percentile corresponding to any rating. It was constructed from all possible 5-point regressions from the database for each position. The regressions overlapped, so most deciles could be estimates from several of the regressions. The final decile estimates are weighted averages of the individual regression estimates. Rating deciles for individual positions Position 10th 20th 30th 40th 50th 60th 70th 80th 90th 95th Max APB ATH CB DT DUAL FB ILB K LS OC OG OLB OT P PRO RB S SDE TE WDE WR Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 7 27 Februray 2017

8 The final table shows the top 40 Stanford recruits for the years , ranked by position percentile. The list includes only players recruited during the past 4 years, but the percentiles are still computed from 6 years of data. Top 40 players for Stanford sequenced by position percentile, Years Position Overall Rnk Name Year Posn Stars Percentile Percentile Foster Sarell 2017 OT Colby Parkinson 2017 TE Walker Little 2017 OT Solomon Thomas 2014 SDE Kaden Smith 2016 TE Trent Irwin 2015 WR Davis Mills 2017 PRO Casey Tucker 2014 OT Curtis Robinson 2016 OLB Osiris St. Brown 2017 WR Paulson Adebo 2017 CB KJ Costello 2016 PRO Christian McCaffrey 2014 APB Dalton Schultz 2014 TE Ryan Johnson 2017 SDE Frank Buncom IV 2015 CB Keller Chryst 2014 PRO Simi Fehoko 2016 WR Jake Bailey 2015 P Connor Wedington 2017 ATH Brandon Simmons 2014 S Bobby Okereke 2014 OLB Sione Heimuli-Lund 2017 RB Clark Yarbrough 2016 OT Treyjohn Butler 2016 CB Cameron Scarlett 2015 ATH Joey Alfieri 2014 OLB Andrew Pryts 2016 S Michael Williams 2016 DT Devery Hamilton 2016 OT Ben Edwards 2015 S Jet Toner 2016 P Dalyn Wade-Perry 2017 DT Justin Reid 2015 S Nick Wilson 2015 OG Bryce Love 2015 APB Obi Eboh 2016 CB Thomas Schaffer 2016 SDE Reilly Gibbons 2014 OT Trevor Speights 2016 RB Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 8 27 Februray 2017

9 Among the top 40 recruits for all teams combined for the recruiting years, USC had 16, UCLA 9, Stanford 6, Notre Dame 5, Oregon and ASU 2 each. Washington, WSU, OSU, and Arizona had none. The 40 th -ranked overall recruit had a position percentile of I was surprised that Washington had none, so I double-checked and, sure enough, their highest-rated recruit fell just under the 96.2 percentile cutoff. I cherry-picked what I considered to be some of the highlights from a ton of data. Again, if you want the database in an Excel spreadsheet and a lot more tables, click on the Download all position percentile files button on the StatKnave.info web site. Position_percentiles-summary.pdf 9 27 Februray 2017