SEC on top of college football with talent, again

[bennyl08]

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2017/4/29/15489050/nfl-draft-2017-picks-results-college-conference-sec-acc-pac-12-big-ten-big-12

More picks than any school by 10, more picks per school (thus normalizing for amount of schools) by almost a full player (0.72 more picks per school than #2).

Not a whole lot more to be said about that other than what about elite talent? I'm somewhat cherry picking here but lets use elite as being the top 2 rounds of the draft.

http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/2017-nfl-draft-picks-sec-sets-record-for-selections-over-first-two-rounds/

SEC set the draft record for number of picks in the first 2 rounds. Remove Bama from that list and we still beat every other conference. Which provides a nice segway for my next argument.

The first counter people always bring up with the SEC is that it is top heavy.

Lets compare that. Sadly, in order to include the Big 12, I have to include the AAC (former Big East) since they actually beat the b12 in total picks.

So, how will we compare the top-heaviness of the conferences? To again normalize b/w the conferences, I'll look at picks per school by removing up to the top 4 draft producing schools in 2017 from the list (i.e. SEC starts with 14 schools and 53 picks, remove Bama and there are 43 picks among 13 schools)

SEC: 3.3, 2.9, 2.5, 2.1
ACC: 2.6, 2.33, 2, 1.7
PAC: 2.5, 2.3, 2, 1.6
B10: 1.8, 1.4, 1.2, 1
AAC: 1.1, 0.9, 0.67, 0.6
B12: 1.1, 1.0, 0.86, 0.5

What does this tell us? Well, without Bama, we still have more draft picks per school. You remove the top 4 schools from the SEC and the bottom 10 still have more draft picks per school than the Big 12 with all of their schools. You can remove the top 3 draft pick schools and the SEC is better than every conference but the ACC in picks per school when they've only lost their top and even then, it's almost identical to the ACC. Removing the top 2 schools from the SEC and our conference is still within 0.17 picks per school or better for every other conference at full strength.

Big 10 had the biggest falloff in draft picks per school when removing the first school. For the PAC 12 having a down year this season, they still showed themselves to be one of the most talented and deep conferences remaining virtually identical with the ACC and significantly above the school below in all phases of draft picks per school.

Bama 10 UF 8 LSU 8 Tenn 6 10/18/26/32 (14 SEC)
Mia 9 Clem 6 NC 6 Pitt 5 9/15/21/26 (14 ACC)
Hou 3 USF 3 temple 3 tied 1, several 0 3/6/9/10 (12 AAC)
Okla 4 OSU 2 KSU 2 WVU 2 4/6/8/10 (10 Big 12)
Mich 11 OSU 7 Iowa 4 Wisc 3 11/18/22/25 (14 Big 10)
Utah 8 UCLA 5 USC 5 UW 5 8/13/18/23 (12 PAC 12)

[bphi11ips]

Good research.

Arkansas would be a perennial contender in the Big 12 just like it was in the SWC.  The SWC was a good conference, but the SEC of the 21st century is a professional prep league. 

[theshiva]

Bo's show had an interesting point. Why has Bret had less draft picks from when he was at Wiscy than here? Even though he's had better recruiting classes?

[bennyl08]

Good research.

Arkansas would be a perennial contender in the Big 12 just like it was in the SWC.  The SWC was a good conference, but the SEC of the 21st century is a professional prep league.

I disagree with that. If we were in the Big 12, we wouldn't have had as much money for all the expansions we have done, and our recruiting would have been lower as well.

Now, if we were to change conferences right now after having had the recruiting and financial benefits of being in the SEC, then we could use that boost to be near the top of the B12 and hopefully use that reputation to sustain our recruiting but we'd have to be averaging 9+ wins a season in the Big 12 to maintain the quality of recruits that 7-8 wins in the SEC gets.

[Youngsta71701]

Bo's show had an interesting point. Why has Bret had less draft picks from when he was at Wiscy than here? Even though he's had better recruiting classes?

One word. Coordinators.

[bennyl08]

Bo's show had an interesting point. Why has Bret had less draft picks from when he was at Wiscy than here? Even though he's had better recruiting classes?

Year  Ark   Wisc
1       4       1
2       5       4
3       5       4
4       3       2

Ummm.... I suppose the simple answer to the question is he spent more years in Wisconsin than he has at Arkansas? In the first 4 years at Arkansas, we have had 17 draft picks. His first 4 seasons at Wisc had 11 draft picks. His first 5 seasons had 16 draft picks. You have to go into his 6th season there before he's had more draft picks than he's had in 4 years here. He spend a total of 7 years in Wisc and had a total of 25 draft picks. At the current pace, he'll have have 30 picks over 7 years while here.

[gchamblee]

Year  Ark   Wisc
1       4       1
2       5       4
3       5       4
4       3       2

Ummm.... I suppose the simple answer to the question is he spent more years in Wisconsin than he has at Arkansas? In the first 4 years at Arkansas, we have had 17 draft picks. His first 4 seasons at Wisc had 11 draft picks. His first 5 seasons had 16 draft picks. You have to go into his 6th season there before he's had more draft picks than he's had in 4 years here. He spend a total of 7 years in Wisc and had a total of 25 draft picks. At the current pace, he'll have have 30 picks over 7 years while here.

[Hawghiggs]

I disagree with that. If we were in the Big 12, we wouldn't have had as much money for all the expansions we have done, and our recruiting would have been lower as well.

Now, if we were to change conferences right now after having had the recruiting and financial benefits of being in the SEC, then we could use that boost to be near the top of the B12 and hopefully use that reputation to sustain our recruiting but we'd have to be averaging 9+ wins a season in the Big 12 to maintain the quality of recruits that 7-8 wins in the SEC gets.

This is false statement. The Big 12 hasn't been behind the SEC until recently as far as media contracts. As for recruiting. We would have still recruited about the same. We've never been a powerhouse in recruiting. We would have greater recruiting numbers out of Texas for sure.  But our recruiting of Louisiana wouldn't be different. The only difference would be the southeast.

[RazorbackToTheFuture]

One word. Coordinators.

Two words. 2nd half.

[ChicoHog]

It's about line play and defense.  Without looking it up I bet Bama has had twice as many defensive guys drafted than offense. Saban is a great coach and even better recruiter.  You recruit defense and you teach offense.

And the line of scrimmage players in the conference-especially the best teams is very good-compared to most of the other schools.   Only so many quality D-lineman out there and most of them are from the south. 

[bennyl08]

It's about line play and defense.  Without looking it up I bet Bama has had twice as many defensive guys drafted than offense. Saban is a great coach and even better recruiter.  You recruit defense and you teach offense.

And the line of scrimmage players in the conference-especially the best teams is very good-compared to most of the other schools.   Only so many quality D-lineman out there and most of them are from the south.

29 offense to 36 defense. It's been pretty neck and neck and will typically yo-yo between losing a lot of defensive talent and offensive talent. This year they lost most of their defense (7 picks on defense vs 3 on offense) and they'll probably have more offensive players in the draft next season. 25 OL/DL players vs 40 non-line players. Of the 14 positions drafted, line players made up 5 (C,G,T,DT,DE) or 35.7%. Line players made up 38.5% of picks. So, it's pretty even with draft picks with a slight edge to defense (7 pick edge at the end of this year but again, this is a zig year and they'll zag next with most of the time, the discrepancy is 2-4). Further, it is pretty even with line players vs non-line though line players also have a slight proportional advantage.

[HamSammich]

This crap is all for the knuckle dragging fans that want to chant SEC SEC....


The only measure of a conference is to see the number of starters it has say from the 2015 draft class and udfa's.

Starters matter


As I'm sure you know because I continually see these huge block of texts in the form of RA RA RAZORBACKS! Posts from you... gms draft starters about 41 percent of the time.
So I'm guessing you research a little.


Starters matter.... draft position.... not so much...


Please do a huge block of text researching STARTERS in the NFL from draft class and conference. Until then I'll continue to ignore these posts.

[ChicoHog]

29 offense to 36 defense. It's been pretty neck and neck and will typically yo-yo between losing a lot of defensive talent and offensive talent. This year they lost most of their defense (7 picks on defense vs 3 on offense) and they'll probably have more offensive players in the draft next season. 25 OL/DL players vs 40 non-line players. Of the 14 positions drafted, line players made up 5 (C,G,T,DT,DE) or 35.7%. Line players made up 38.5% of picks. So, it's pretty even with draft picks with a slight edge to defense (7 pick edge at the end of this year but again, this is a zig year and they'll zag next with most of the time, the discrepancy is 2-4). Further, it is pretty even with line players vs non-line though line players also have a slight proportional advantage.

Nice job Benny.  I am surprised how many offensive guys have been drafted.  Regardless I still say Bama has consistently won with defense since Saban has been there.  They have had some good offensive teams but always seem to be top notch on defense. 

[LZH]

This crap is all for the knuckle dragging fans that want to chant SEC SEC....


The only measure of a conference is to see the number of starters it has say from the 2015 draft class and udfa's.

Starters matter


As I'm sure you know because I continually see these huge block of texts in the form of RA RA RAZORBACKS! Posts from you... gms draft starters about 41 percent of the time.
So I'm guessing you research a little.


Starters matter.... draft position.... not so much...


Please do a huge block of text researching STARTERS in the NFL from draft class and conference. Until then I'll continue to ignore these posts.

Doesn't look like you've been ignoring them too much....

[gchamblee]

This crap is all for the knuckle dragging fans that want to chant SEC SEC....


The only measure of a conference is to see the number of starters it has say from the 2015 draft class and udfa's.

Starters matter


As I'm sure you know because I continually see these huge block of texts in the form of RA RA RAZORBACKS! Posts from you... gms draft starters about 41 percent of the time.
So I'm guessing you research a little.


Starters matter.... draft position.... not so much...


Please do a huge block of text researching STARTERS in the NFL from draft class and conference. Until then I'll continue to ignore these posts.

Would be great if you would just ignore the threads that you aren't interested in. We really don't care that you aren't interested and certainly don't need to read a long post about why you aren't interested.