Golden Nuggets: Cal Is Among the Nation's Best Schools at Turning Elite Recruits into NBA or NFL Draft Picks

via blogs.emory.edu

What do these numbers mean, though? Lewis and Tripathi explain.

As a follow-up to our previous post, we would like to provide a more complete view of the best and worst colleges based on converting elite recruits into NFL Draft picks (number of draft picks divided by the number of four and five star recruits). This study considers the last six NFL drafts, and examines the top sixty schools in terms of relevant recruiting cycles over the past twelve years. We exclude schools that have not produced a single draft pick in the 2007-2012 period or that have less than four elite recruits over the relevant recruiting cycles.

Since there have been a considerable number of inquiries, it should be noted that the University of Alabama finished in the middle of the pack. While the table above is produced from a rather straight-forward statistical analysis (descriptive statistics for each school), we would like to stress that our main results are derived from multiple linear regression models. The key result is the significant negative relationship between the number of four-star prospects and the draft conversion rate of high ranked prospect. It is also worth noting that while we focused on the ratio of draft picks to elite recruits we also conducted a number of other analyses that focused on alternative measures of draft success such as the number of Day 1 or First round picks per elite recruit. Our key finding was replicated across the various models.

Our series continues with an examination of recruiting classes from 2002-2011 in the PAC-12. The chart below lists our efficiency rankings for the PAC-12 (for more details on our methodology, please click here). The University of Washington was the clear leader in the PAC-12 in converting talent into NBA draft picks. The Huskies were followed by USC and Cal. Traditional power UCLA finished 5^th.

via blogs.emory.edu

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