Brain trust: Mark Helfrich prepares to send Marcus Mariota and the Oregon offense out on the field during the Rose Bowl, a game in which five years of careful planning and recruiting selectivity paid off in a 59-20 win over Florida State, setting a Rose Bowl record for points scored (Ezra Shaw, Getty Images).
Talent wins football games, but it’s not the only thing that wins them.
Since Urban Meyer came to Ohio State, his three recruiting classes have ranked 4th, 2nd and 3rd in the country.
Jimbo Fisher and Florida State have recruited 12 five-star players in the five previous seasons, cranking out classes ranked 4th, 10th, 6th, 2nd and 10th.
At Alabama, Nick Saban has had the number one recruiting class in the country for four straight seasons, and the year before that he finished 5th in recruiting. He’s won three national championships at Alabama, but gone home scowling the last two seasons, including a first-round exit in the inaugural year of the college football playoffs.
Phyllis from Magnus was apoplectic after the Tide lost the Sugar Bowl to Meyer and the Buckeyes on Thursday, especially after leading 21-6 in the second quarter. Meyer’s Buckeyes buried them with a flurry of big plays, then hung on for the win despite some poor clock management at the end.
The enduring image of the 2013 season was a tight-lipped Saban tossing off his headset as Auburn’s Chris Davis returned a missed field goal 100 yards in the closing seconds of a loss in the Iron Bowl, a freakish lapse of discipline that kept Bama out of the SEC title game.
The agony of deflated expectations intensified a month later when the 15-time national champions were dumped in the Sugar Bowl by Oklahoma, 45-31.
In spite of recruiting’s biggest home field advantage, the last two Alabama seasons have ended in wrenching losses. Even so, Saban’s staff is at the top of the rankings for the 5th straight year in 2015.
The Ducks? They do things differently.
Because of a marked geographic disadvantage, Oregon regularly trails in the recruiting star system. They’ve achieved five Top Ten seasons on the field with recruiting classes ranked 26th, 22nd, 16th, 9th and 13th in the country.
Oregon will always lag behind USC and UCLA in the talent grab. They’ll only rarely top Texas and Florida, two perennial underachievers, in the raw rankings of signed top drawer high school prospects. The main reason is simple: far less available home-grown talent. The state of Georgia produces about 250 Divison One scholarship football players a season. In an average year, the state of Oregon produces 4-6.
The Ducks overcome this handicap with tremendous selectivity, coaching continuity, and a practice pace and playing style that allows them to squeeze out far more reps for second and third string players. They played 11 freshmen this year, and newcomers like Royce Freeman, Tyrell Crosby, Charles Nelson and Aidan Schneider played big roles in their success. Redshirt freshmen like Devon Allen, Darren Carrington and Chris Seisay became starters.
Carrington was a four-star prospect out of high school, but he played like a future All-American in grabbing 7 passes for 165 yards and two touchdowns in the Rose Bowl, the 5th-best performance in 103-year history of the Granddaddy:
Most Receiving Yards
Rose Bowl History
| Keyshawn Johnson | 1996 USC | 216 |
| Dwayne Jarrett | 2007 USC | 205 |
| Andre Johnson | 2002 Miami | 199 |
| J.J. Stokes | 1994 UCLA | 176 |
| Darren Carrington | 2014 Oregon | 165 |
| Don Hutson | 1935 Alabama | 164 |
The Ducks recruit nationally now, garnering commitments this season from players from Georgia, Florida, Missouri, Minnesota, Texas, California and Hawaii.
It helps too that the Ducks have qualified and enrolled every signed recruit over the last five years.
The coaching staff has excelled in identifying and training undervalued players. Marcus Mariota was a three-star quarterback with just three scholarship offers out of high school, and one scouting service rated him 116th among prep quarterbacks that year. Seven running backs ranked ahead of Royce Freeman in the 2014 recruiting class, but few have had a better debut season than Freeman’s 1343 yards.
Oregon places a premium on selecting players who fit the program’s goals and philosophy. Mark Helfrich remarked last Signing Day that the 2014 class included 17 team captains. They look for leadership and coachability, interviewing coaches, teachers and administrative staff to get a broader picture when screening the fit of a particular athlete.
It’s become a “Moneyball” approach to recruiting success, in which the Ducks are far more efficient than the market at finding the right players and building a deep and cohesive team, a practice that paid huge dividends in this year’s championship run. The team achieved a PAC-12 crown and a title game berth despite the loss of leading receiver Bralon Addison, 2-year starter at left tackle Tyler Johnstone, all-league tight end Pharaoh Brown, and Consensus All-American cornerback Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, all lost for the season due to knee injuries. In addition, starters Jake Fisher, Hroniss Grasu and Thomas Tyner missed three games each at tackle, center and running back.
Oregon has used 10 different lineups on the offensive line, and still led the conference in rushing for the 9th straight year at 242 yards per game.
Recruiting class rankings, College Football Final Four, last five seasons:
2014
#1 Alabama 26 commits 6 five stars 13 four stars
#3 Ohio State 23 commits 1 five star 15 four stars
#4 Florida State 28 commits 3 five stars 13 four stars
#26 Oregon 20 commits 0 five stars 5 four stars
2013 Team Rankings
#1 Alabama 25 commits 4 five stars 13 four stars
#2 Ohio State 24 commits 2 five stars 16 four stars
#10 Florida State 21 commits 2 five stars 9 four stars
#22 Oregon 19 commits 1 five star 7 four stars
2012 Team Rankings
#1 Alabama 26 commits 3 five stars 14 four stars
#4 Ohio State 25 commits 2 five stars 14 four stars
#6 Florida State 19 commits 3 five stars 10 four stars
#16 Oregon 21 commits 0 five stars 10 four stars
2011 Team Rankings
#1 Alabama 22 commits 3 five stars 14 four stars
#2 Florida State 29 commits 2 five stars 13 four stars
#9 Oregon 23 commits 2 five stars 9 four stars
#11 Ohio State 23 commits 1 five star 9 four stars
2010 Team Rankings
#5 Alabama 26 commits 1 five star 15 four stars
#10 Florida State 24 commits 2 five stars 8 four stars
#13 Oregon 23 commits 1 five star 10 four stars
#25 Ohio State 19 commits 0 five stars 8 four stars
(Rankings from rivals.com–complete rankings available HERE)