SEC Football Recruiting Trends SEC West

This is the second installment in a four part series that will attempt to measure the quantity and quality of OOS recruits for every SEC football program between the 2004-2014 signing classes. Some variables - such as coaching changes, programmatic success/failure, and increased/decreased competition - will be highlighted to demonstrate their impact.

Part One examined Alabama, Auburn, and Mississippi State.

Note: For simplification, an attempt was made to filter out JUCO and military academy transfers from the results, and only high school senior signees (not necessarily qualifiers) were counted. Additionally, Rivals ratings were used until the 2010 Class at which point the 247 composite ranking became available.

For complete OOS tallies of the below teams click here.

Initial Impressions:

• 2005 is the first recruiting class from Ed Orgeron and it looks very different from Cutcliffe's last class. Many of Orgeron's OOS signees were two star recruits, but he did manage to sign his fair share of blue chips in three classes.
• Coming from USC, Orgeron had the connections to sign six California recruits in his three classes. He actually signed more from the West Coast if we were counting JUCO's for this exercise.
• The Houston Nutt years saw more signees from Georgia and Florida. Recruiting in Florida was led by assistant Chris Vaughn who graduated from Godby HS. Little surprise so many recruits came from the Tallahassee area.
• Nutt also expanded Ole Miss recruiting into Texas, Maryland, and Illinois which is something Hugh Freeze has continued.
• I thought I'd see more Tennessee signees from Freeze, but there hasn't been an appreciable uptick yet. Freeze has continued the success of signing players out of Georgia. The departure of assistant Wesley McGriff, after helping Ole Miss sign it's top ten class in 2013, hasn't slowed Ole Miss down too much in Georgia yet.
• The commits for 2015 appear to fall along similar lines as Freeze's previous classes.
  

• It's interesting to compare the Nutt time at Arkansas to his time at Ole Miss. Georgia recruiting was still successful, but Florida recruiting was not. I suspect this has something to do with not having Chris Vaughn on staff at Arkansas.
• Nutt did have success signing recruits out of Texas.
• Petrino has a bad recruiting reputation, but going off this chart he was a far superior recruiter than Nutt. Petrino continued Arkansas' presence in Texas, but also succeeded in diversifying Arkansas' recruiting geography. Petrino had specific success in Oklahoma.
• Bielema's presence hasn't been followed by an uptick in Midwest recruiting, but he has displayed an ability to sign highly-ranked offensive linemen from places like Hawai'i and Minnesota. Neither state is the typical origin of Arkansas football players.
• Bielema has had more success in Florida than either of his forbearers, specifically the Miami area.  
  

• With its large population of FBS-bound recruits Texas A&M has been able to be more insular than North Korea. I wonder if prior to Sumlin's arrival OOS recruits didn't want to play for A&M, and these days A&M can afford to not even bother with most of them?
• The vast majority of OOS signees has come from Louisiana for the last ten years.

• LSU's success rivals that of Auburn and Alabama, so it's little surprise that they recruit and develop at the same level.
• What was surprising to me was how little OOS recruiting LSU does compared to Auburn and Alabama. It is a prestigious program too, but remarkably can rely on recruiting within a low population state. These kids are also growing up in a state with a single football power.
• The majority of OOS recruits come from Texas as one probably imagines. Recent years have seen successful forays into the Midwest and The Plains States.