Pac-10 Recruiting Maps, Part II

Posted by: Avinash on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Read Part I (Northwest/Northern California) here.

Going again through the super awesome MapGameday, we see how important it is for the Pac-10 to defend their home turf from intruders. Cal did a so-so job, Washington a superb job. How would the southern schools fare?

zonavegasrecruiting

Arizona
Bob Stoops gets another year, and Arizona gets another subpar recruiting class in-state. Dennis Erickson and Arizona State pretty much beat up in the local markets, and you can expect them to be USC’s biggest challenge next year with a strong class returning and the rest of the Pac-10 floundering. But this is Sun Devil country.

The out-of-state state schools (Wazzu and OSU) took their lone recruits in the outskirts. I think we’re noticing a trend with these schools.

If we look even closer…

phoenixrecruiting

Phoenix
Bob Stoops went toe-to-toe with Dennis Erickson in every major region (including the hotbed of recruiting in Chandler. He did nothing but manage a split, although I believe the more highly touted high schools ended up in Arizona State (and who wouldn’t? Tucson is El Dumpville). But ASU is a junior college, right Bobby boy? All the more reason I remain mystified you’ll be coaching next year.

Oregon, the Pac-10’s Visigoths, again continued its southern raids. Cal, UW and UCLA made some inroads but not many.

westlarecruiting

eastlarecruiting

ocrecruiting

LA
USC…UCLA…USC…UCLA…

You’re going to hear a lot of this nauseating talk about who wins the recruiting battle of LA now that Rick Neuheisel’s in town, but from taking a look at the maps you can see some very interesting data. ASU made huge inroads into SoCal with his impressive 2nd place Pac-10 finish, and in some areas split or did better than USC and UCLA, especially in the Eastern regions. Mike Stoops also seemed to recruit very well here.

The West side of LA is a hodgepodge–lots of Bruin blue, and some Trojan red, and plenty of others. Neither team seemed to win outright in the area, but considering how clustered the region appears, the Bruins seemed to retain the upper hand locally. USC comes in a contested 2nd, with Arizona State and Arizona 3rd and 4th.

You can also see that the Northwestern state schools and Stanford tended to be clustered around the suburbs and outskirts of the city. Cal didn’t have much success in LA, finishing near the bottom of the Pac-10 overall in this region.

The rest of the country

Didn’t color in a map for this one, but there were some interesting notes. Because of its inability to fawn local talent, guess who had the longest reach? It wasn’t just USC who managed to claw their way West. Due to diminishing marginal returns in their home area, the Cardinal had to look elsewhere. Stanford picked six recruits from the East (Michigan, Cincinnati, DC, Georgia, and even two from Florida), plucked a few from Texas, and went along its way.

USC did not do much out of state this year (only four recruits east of the Rockies signed with the Trojans in 08), possibly caused by fallout from the Stanford debacle and the rise to prominence of several rivals in their conference. Oregon interestingly is gaining prominence in SEC country and the Big 12, taking seven from that area–oh, what being sponsored by the CEO of Nike will do for you!

Arizona does atone for its weakness in its own state by pillaging Texas (has Mike Stoops really done anything but live off the successes of his big bro?). The state schools (ASU, Wazzu, OSU) barely made a dent outside of their region, although Jack Elway is heading to the House of Heat. UCLA and Washington only had one recruit outside the West Coast, but their regional success seemed to be more than enough. As for Cal? Two from Texas, one from Missouri, one from Hawaii.

Conclusions:

The current big Pac-10 powerhouses (USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Cal) dominated the cities, while state schools like Oregon State and Washington State foraged the small towns to find what they needed (Wazzu with a higher degree of success). Arizona State scoured the Southwest, especially in Arizona, Vegas and the outskirts of LA. Stanford apparently cares about GPA, so they actually recruited nationwide for academics who would succeed outside of sports–dorks.

In terms of owning their territory, I’d say Washington did the best, ASU holds a substantial edge over Arizona in Phoenix, USC and UCLA expectedly split LA with the Arizona schools not far behind, Cal did OK in the Bay Area, and Stanford got smacked around. Oregon and the Northwest state schools played Carthage and scoured the backwaters of America for recruits. I’m not exactly sure how much Cal actually recruits Bay-Area wise–I’ll try to do some research over the Tedford era concerning how well this team did.

Some trends I encourage fellow sports bloggers to examine for their respective conferences (hopefully with prettier maps):

Readers, please point out what I’m probably missing. Any additional insight or maps you’d like to see?



Topics: College Football, Pac-10, recruiting

Related Articles
    None Found

Comments are closed.