‘Recruit and develop’ has worked on the field for UK. Is it working off it, too?

It would be mincing words to say “the rich got richer” when Alabama recently completed the signing of a juggernaut recruiting class.

Alabama signed 17 of the top-100 players ranked by Rivals in the 2021 recruiting cycle. Per 247Sports, it signed more five-star recruits (seven) than any other team and had as many four-star recruits (16) as just one other program in the country (Texas A&M). Its 327.91 points were the most ever by any program since 247Sports started grading recruiting classes at the start of the century, and that total was nearly 20 points better than class brought in by No. 2, Ohio State (309.49). It was more than 30 points better than the next-closest team in the Southeastern Conference (No. 3 Georgia, 294.55).

For fans of other marquee college football programs, it’s easy to get disgruntled about the distance between the Crimson Tide and them. For fans of programs like Kentucky, dread can beget hopelessness when one dwells on the idea of catching up to what’s happening at Alabama and other programs that historically have had a stranglehold on talent acquisition and postseason conquests.

Only 11 teams have played in the College Football Playoff, which began in the 2014 season. Seven of those programs — Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Clemson, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Oklahoma — have not finished outside the top 20 in total recruiting rankings since the playoff format started. Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State have not finished outside the top 10 in that span.

Playoff appearances aren’t the only reason the elite stay elite — geography, tradition and decades-long institutional support have as much if not more to do with that — but they sure help. For schools like UK, which has never even played in an SEC championship game, let alone won one, what does it have to do in order to get — and keep — a seat at the table?

“I can’t control how Alabama recruits or, you know, anybody else, what they do,” Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops said in a February interview with the Herald-Leader. “They’re going to get good players. There’s a lot of good programs in our league. But our concentration is on us.”

One slogan, “recruit and develop,” that Kentucky has deployed in recent years will remain an important one for as long as it fields a football program. As UK’s staff has recruited an overall level talent generally regarded as “better” than what it ever brought in before Stoops arrived, its on-field success has grown. But it has to continue making diamonds out of less-heralded recruits, like it did with two-star athlete Josh Allen, as well as send four- and five-star athletes to the NFL in order to demonstrate that its gains aren’t of the flash-in-the-pan variety.

Success begets success, even if it comes more incrementally at a Kentucky than it does at an Alabama.

“We work really hard to get better and develop our players,” Stoops said. “I owe that to each and every player, I owe that to the coaches, I owe it to the fans and administration. The whole organization, we owe that, to constantly develop and to get better and to look at all options to get better each and every year and each and every day. Everything has consequences.”

Rankings

Kentucky’s most recent signing class ranked 33rd. It was one of the best in school history, but still nowhere near the nation’s best. It wasn’t really anywhere near the SEC’s best; the Wildcats finished 12th in the 2021 league rankings, in front of Vanderbilt and South Carolina.

A lot of things change teams’ fortunes — transfers from other schools, coaching shake-ups, etc. — but it’s safe to say all schools count on talent they recruit out of high schools and junior colleges to develop into on-field stars. It’s not a surefire indicator of on-field success, but it’s a good one. There are always exceptions for generational talent, but generally, those guys should be making big contributions to a program by the time they’re juniors (which, for many, would be their fourth year in a program if they used a redshirt season). So most players from Kentucky’s 2013 class, in theory, should have been on the field by 2016.

From the start of Stoops’ tenure in 2013 and going through the 2017 cycle, UK averaged a finish of 11.6 among the 14 SEC teams in terms of recruiting, good for the No. 12 spot overall. The Wildcats from 2016-2020 averaged four conference victories, the No. 7 ranking in the league over the last four years; that was the highest jump among all conference teams who outperformed their average recruiting ranking from 2013-2017.

UK is one of seven SEC teams in that time period that ranked higher in conference wins from 2016-2020 than it did in 247Sports’ final recruiting rankings from 2013-2017, along with: Georgia (2nd in average SEC victories, 3rd in recruiting average); Florida (3rd in average SEC victories, 6th in recruiting average); South Carolina (8th in average SEC victories, 9th in recruiting average); Mississippi State (9th in average SEC victories, 11th in recruiting average); Missouri (10th in average SEC victories, 13th in recruiting average) and Vanderbilt (13th in average SEC victories, 14th in recruiting average).

Several teams finished lower in average conference victories than their average recruiting finish from 2013-2017, but the differences for Mississippi and Tennessee are most stark. The Volunteers ranked seventh and the Rebels eighth in average recruiting finish but over the last four years were 10th and 11th, respectively, in average number of conference wins. Mississippi perhaps can lean on strength of schedule as an excuse — four of the top six teams in average conference victories reside in the West Division — but it does have the advantage of having Vanderbilt as its cross-divisional foe. Tennessee has to play Alabama every year (and hasn’t beaten the Crimson Tide since 2006) but gets to play against the “weaker” SEC East, though every team in that division except Vanderbilt has averaged more conference wins than it the last four years.

(Note 1: Why show average conference victories instead of overall wins? The differences in strength of out-of-conference schedules are difficult to control for. Some teams play annual rivalries against Power Five schools while others rotate a game or two against strong competition annually. Even if you exclude postseason games, the exercise becomes more complicated and since the comparison is rooted in recruiting rankings within the SEC, it seems fair to just compare teams based on victories within the league.)

(Note 2: More SEC games were played in 2020 than other seasons, but its inclusion in the five-year average was negligible in teams’ rankings. Kentucky averaged four conference wins and finished seventh overall in both scenarios.)

2022

The positive takeaway for Kentucky is that it’s delivering on its “recruit and develop” mantra. A perceivable negative? To date, its demonstrated ability to “do less with more” hasn’t translated to a better standing in recruiting rankings, though 2022 might be a trend-bucker.

UK’s average finish has ticked upward, from 11.6 from 2013-2017 to 11 flat from 2018-2021, but that average still ranked 12th among all SEC teams in that span. Recruiting efforts by Tennessee (7.25 average finish), South Carolina (9.25), Mississippi (9.25) and Arkansas (10.75) have worsened between those four-year periods, but not enough to consistently push the Wildcats past them. (Mississippi State, UK’s cross-division rival, has stayed flat; its average of 10 is good for 11th place from 2013-2017 and from 2018-2021.)

It’s still early in the 2022 recruiting cycle, but Kentucky at the moment finds itself in a rare position. The Wildcats, who boast eight commitments through mid-April, sit 10th nationally and fourth among SEC schools (behind Georgia, LSU and Texas A&M) in Rivals’ most up-to-date rankings. UK as of Sunday had as many four-star commitments as Alabama (five) and were ranked three spots ahead; take a screenshot, because the Crimson Tide are bound to rise.

The latest high school star to choose the Wildcats — 6-foot-7, 300-pound offensive tackle Kiyaunta Goodwin — is on the cusp of a five-star ranking and is regarded as the best prospect who’s committed to Kentucky under Stoops. He was the latest in a handful of players over the last few seasons to choose the Cats over the likes of Alabama and Ohio State, all of whom seem to have one trait in common: a desire to trail blaze.

“(I’m) going somewhere where I’m wanted, and somewhere where I can be a game-changer and a difference-maker,” Goodwin said during his announcement Saturday. “That’s always something that I wanted to do.”

While it seems unlikely that Kentucky will end with a top-five ranking among all SEC teams by the end of the 2022 cycle, it’s positioned itself for a possible historic finish; Kentucky’s best national ranking was 17th in 2014, when it signed 28 players, the most during Stoops’ tenure. That was good for ninth in the SEC that year.

Recruiting matters, plain and simple, and Kentucky has shown that it can do more with “less.” Proving that it can do more with “more” over the next few years will get it closer to the table at which so many want to see it sit. What it’s done so far has paid off considerably.

“Big picture recruiting, I think it’ll be one of the best,” Stoops said recently of UK’s 2022 recruiting efforts. “When it’s all said and done I think it’ll be one of the best years we’ve had. So I feel very good about where we’re going and some of the guys we have in place.”

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