Every year college football fans go bananas over blue-chip recruits (guilty). However, it isn’t uncommon for those unheralded three-star recruits to turn into a special player. For us Florida fans, we have had a bunch- Antonio Callaway, Jarrad Davis, etc. That aside, the reality is that blue-chip recruits are fairly rare. In 2019 there were a total of 383 blue-chips, that ultimately ended up at 54 different colleges. I took an in-depth look at those, and those findings will be finished sometime soon. But in the middle of that study, I got curious about the three-stars.
I took a sample of 1,225 three-star recruits from the 2019 class. There were more, but that was enough. They were the top-rated group that had committed to a school according to the 247 Composite website. In my blue-chip study, I was looking at overall migration patterns- where do the BCs come from and where do they go, etc. I started by doing the same thing for the 3s. Here is a map of where this sample came from (of note, 5 of them came from Canada, not depicted):
This is a map of where these recruits ended up. This gives you a general idea of where they end up going to school.
As you can see, a lot of Florida’s 3-stars leave the state. 165 (first map) are from Florida, but only 75 (second map) committed to schools in Florida, about 45%. This is a net loss of 3-stars of 55%. Keep in mind those that committed aren’t necessarily from Florida- that is just the gross number.
The overall average for recruits to leave their home state is 66%. 2019 5-stars left their home state 65% of the time, 4-stars 67%, and 3-stars left 67% of the time as well. However, for the state of Florida, 118 of their 165 3-stars committed to schools out of state- 72%. A bit higher than average. In this metric, Florida ranked number one:
The average rating for the group is .8490. These players committed to 163 different schools. I was also curious as to how good Florida’s 3s rated compared to everyone else. I took the average rating and then standardized each school’s 3s ratings compared to the other schools in the sample. I then removed schools that have 2 or fewer three-stars; schools like Monmouth, Prairie View A&M, Alabama, and Stony Brook. Because they have so few of the 3s, their averages wouldn’t really change, and I wanted to rank the teams by average rating. Here are the top 20 teams for best 3-star recruits:
| 3s Class Rk | School | N 3 stars | Avg Rating | Std. score |
| 1 | Oregon | 12 | 0.8792 | 2.370 |
| 2 | Auburn | 6 | 0.8760 | 2.121 |
| 3 | Clemson | 14 | 0.8749 | 2.031 |
| 4 | LSU | 7 | 0.8748 | 2.027 |
| 5 | Oklahoma | 5 | 0.8742 | 1.978 |
| 6 | Florida | 8 | 0.8736 | 1.935 |
| 7 | Georgia | 3 | 0.8723 | 1.833 |
| 8 | Michigan | 10 | 0.8722 | 1.819 |
| 9 | Nebraska | 19 | 0.8716 | 1.778 |
| 10 | Texas | 7 | 0.8696 | 1.621 |
| 11 | Washington | 7 | 0.8696 | 1.619 |
| 12 | South Carolina | 15 | 0.8673 | 1.441 |
| 13 | Tennessee | 9 | 0.8673 | 1.440 |
| 14 | Notre Dame | 6 | 0.8667 | 1.388 |
| 15 | Florida State | 10 | 0.8660 | 1.336 |
| 16 | Arkansas | 14 | 0.8659 | 1.327 |
| 17 | Wisconsin | 17 | 0.8651 | 1.268 |
| 18 | TCU | 18 | 0.8645 | 1.221 |
| 19 | Ohio State | 5 | 0.8640 | 1.179 |
| 20 | Texas A&M | 11 | 0.8627 | 1.079 |
The Gators sit at 6th overall. Their 3-star recruits are almost 2 full standard deviations above the mean (“Std. score”). If you’re going to get some three stars, might as well be good ones. Florida’s success recruiting good 3-stars is not an indicator (to me) of recruiting failure. Mullen is doing an excellent job of stocking the roster with blue-chip talent, especially compared to his predecessors:
With Florida landing a top 10 class this year and on track to have an even better class next year, Florida will be just fine on talent. Go Gators.
