College Football Recruiting Heat Map

[Mescalero]

This is cool. You can see where your favorite team has focused its recruiting (all recruits or just blue chips) from 2000-2020. I like seeing the change during different eras, coaches, for different teams. One team in particular had a relatively national recruiting footprint over the 20 year period, but is now almost sub-regional over the last four or so recruiting cycles.

Streamlit

cfb-recruiting.herokuapp.com

 

[Arrowslanger]

Pretty cool, thanks for sharing

 

[Mescalero]

Most of the Vols fans have probably ignored this post, but there might be hope for your program with the hiring of Heupel. That Fulmer's response to the question at the infamous press conference about the firing of Pruitt was that the "recruiting was good" is laughable on several levels, the obvious and not so obvious. The recruiting wasn't "good" under Pruitt. Over the 20 year period, UT has pulled recruits from 29 states, including Hawaii. During the Jones era, UT pulled recruits from 20 states. During Pruitt's three years, that dropped to only 13 states. The top 5 states for football recruits are FL (clear #1), followed closely by GA, TX, CA, and probably LA. UT doesn't appear to have ever recruited TX well or CA (9 and 10 recruits, respectively, for the 20 year period). Talent in TN is really improving, especially middle TN, but states like OH, VA, NC, MD, NJ, probably even AZ are still better. UT lives and dies by walling off its home state and taking as much talent as possible out of GA and FL.

Over the 20 year period, UT pulled 48 recruits out of FL and 72 out of GA (it's #3 and #2 states, respectively). TN, of course, was its best state with 122. The Jones era saw UT take 24 out of FL (or 50% of its FL recruits for the 20 year period) and 39 out of GA (or over 50% of its GA recruits for the 20 year period). 63 of UT's 122 TN recruits came to Knoxville during the Jones era (that's over 50%). Maybe the guy couldn't coach, but recruiting wise, that's the best it's been for UT this century. Jones was even able to pull three players out of TX. Pruitt was a disaster. Only managed to pull 5 recruits out of FL!!!!! Only 17 out of GA and none out of TX. While Jones got recruits from 20 states, Pruitt only managed to pull recruits from 13 states.

There are some questions about Heupel's recruiting chops. Whether those rumors are true or not, only time will tell. But he should at least get UT back into the mix of recruiting FL. By coaching at a school like UCF, he clearly had to rely on FL, but was able to pull some from TX and VA. A lot will also depend on how good his assistants can recruit.