Ranking the best college drafts of all time

I've been working on a project for a while and just recently finished it.  The project is essentially a list of every NFL draft from 1968 to the present.  The reason I picked 1968 as the starting point is that is the first year the AFL and NFL had combined drafts consisting of a total of 26 teams.  The reason this is important is the draft is the best value indicator we have of the relative strengths of each college football team.  While it isn't perfect, it's the best tool we have.  The only other option is to use subjective measures or try to use some statistical model which will always have flaws.  The draft is literally the only impartial method as it is in the NFL's best interest to take the best players for their teams.

There are literally hundreds of articles I can create using this tool as a basis and I thought I'd start with the most obvious.

What school had the best draft in history?

It's a pretty simple question with a difficult answer.

My methodology was to give every draft pick a number rating from 0 to 250.  The first draft pick gets 250, the second pick gets 249, until you reach the 250th pick gets a value of 1, and everything else is zero.  It's simple and it equates the different drafts as a 1st round pick in a 26 team league is not worth exactly the same as the 1st round pick in a 32 team league.  The reason I used 250 is since the league went to a 7 round draft in the mid 90s, there are usually around that number of picks.  It wouldn't be fair to those drafts to use a higher number since scouting wasn't as refined in the 1970s and they had 17 rounds (poor scouting is a bit of a problem too but unavoidable).

So what does all that mean?  Here's the top ten drafts in history.

Year
Overall Ranking
Value
AP
2004
Ohio State
1999
4
1981
Pittsburgh
1990
2
1988
Oklahoma
1801
3
2008
USC
1790
3
2006
Ohio State
1779
4
2009
USC
1769
3
2000
Tennessee
1766
8
2006
USC
1755
2
2005
Oklahoma
1744
3
1984
Texas
1743
5


A cynic might note that of that none of these teams actually won a national championship.  My response would be that there are other factors involved which essentially come down to 3 things:  an experienced quarterback, a favorable schedule, and luck.

In the Ohio State examples above, in 2003 (remember the draft is the following year), they played Wisconsin, Michigan, and Penn State on the road then in 2005 played Michigan, Penn State and eventual national champ Texas at home.  2005 was made even more difficult due to inexperience at QB which wasn't an issue by the end of the season.  The 2005 Ohio State team is a perfect example of why a playoff is needed as teams that improve throughout the year still have a chance.  I would have loved to get a 2nd shot at Texas or Penn State (who finished 3rd) that year.

The Pitt Panthers had a similar situation.  They lost an early season game at #11 Florida State.  They were considered by many as the best team in the country at seasons end but no type of playoff existed and they watched helplessly as undefeated Clemson claimed the title.  It would be hard to argue with someone that argued this was the best team of all time.  With a young Dan Marino at quarterback, he was supported by seniors Hugh Green, Mark May, Ricky Jackson, and Russ Grimm.

Considering the number of times USC is on the list from 2006 - 2009, you'd think they would have won multiple championships.  In 2005 they lost to the freakishly talented Vince Young.  In 2006 they were rebuilding but lost at UCLA and at Oregon St to finish 4th.  In 2007, they lost to Stanford in one of the most inexplicable upsets in history only lose at Oregon a few weeks later and put them out of the BCS.  In 2008, they lost on the road to a bad Oregon State team and were never in the running again.  The fact they never won a national championship during that time is amazing considering the talent they had on those squads.

If you look at the next ten you see much better results:



Year
Overall Ranking
Value
AP
2002
Miami (FL)
1731
1
1993
Notre Dame
1694
2
2010
Florida
1693
3
1968
USC
1680
1
1980
USC
1676
2
1988
Miami (FL)
1669
1
1995
Colorado
1654
3
1977
USC
1650
2
1994
Notre Dame
1644
2
1982
Texas
1599
2


Three national champs and no team that finished worse than 3rd.  I think it is safe to say that this rating system, while not perfect, is a pretty good indicator of success (I've actually got a more complex formula that includes underclassmen but that's for another post).

You see the same schools having repeated success in recruiting.  Since 1968, these are the schools that have finished in the top 100 drafts along with the year & number of times it has happened.



Times in Top 100
USC
11
'08
'09
'06
'68
'80
'77
'83
'71
'73
'75
'90
Miami (FL)
11
'02
'88
'06
'04
'93
'03
'91
'87
'01
'11
'97
Ohio State
9
'04
'06
'75
'71
'95
'99
'09
'97
'88
Florida State
7
'01
'95
'98
'06
'05
'00
'97
Notre Dame
7
'93
'94
'72
'78
'90
'91
'69
Oklahoma
7
'88
'05
'79
'10
'80
'73
'76
Penn State
7
'82
'87
'74
'03
'96
'93
'80
Colorado
5
'95
'91
'76
'77
'74
Tennessee
5
'00
'02
'92
'91
'98
Texas
4
'84
'82
'07
'80
Florida
3
'10
'99
'02
Nebraska
3
'73
'97
'80
Arizona State
2
'83
'82
Georgia
2
'01
'05
North Carolina
2
'11
'98
Purdue
2
'73
'04
Washington
2
'98
'92
Alabama
1
'12
Grambling
1
'71
Michigan
1
'72
Mississippi
1
'68
Pittsburgh
1
'81
Texas A&M
1
'87
Texas-El Paso
1
'68
UCLA
1
'74
Virginia
1
'97
Virginia Tech
1
'08
Wisconsin
1
'85


The Big Ten and SEC lead the list with 6 schools each though there is a noticeable absence of southern schools throughout the 60s and 70s.  That's because they tended away from blacks during that time which is why you see teams like Grambling, Tennessee State, and UTEP on the lists.  This reinforces how useful list is can be as while some conferences ignored these players during that period, the NFL was using them to great success.

I am putting the whole ranking list on my Google database and you can find it on the links of the left.