Revisiting John Cooper

Everyone needs a hobby and one poster on the forums continual rant is that Jim Tressel was a terrible recruiter and the only reason he won a national championship is because John Cooper left him talent.  He continually raves about Cooper and tells everyone that we need to look past his record vs Michigan.  The reason for his ranting is that he believes that Urban Meyer is going to dominant and combine the recruiting of Cooper with the ability to use it.

I love this guy’s enthusiasm about the future but I hate it when we feel the need to tear down others to make ourselves feel better about the future.  I decided to look at some of the facts.

I got out my handy recruiting database and value any recruit since 1968 on a scale based on where they were recruited.  The first pick is worth 250 pts decreasing by one to the 250th pick.  The reason I used 250 is that today’s drafts around that number and it equalizes the days when the NFL had 26 teams and the draft had 17 rounds.


A few points of note:

• The numbers do no match recruiting class as that would have taken too much time. I used the NFL draft and backdated 4 years. I looked at the 2004 class and only Chris Gamble was a Tressel recruit.
• In 1988, college football players started leaving after their 3rd year of school though it is rare and because this is about Cooper/Tressel I checked 2004.
• Redshirting allows players an extra year of college which affects this slightly. 
• Earle Bruce’s 1979 to 1982 classes were affected by the USFL as if it didn’t exist, the number of players drafted would have been better than the above.

John Cooper had many great drafts and based on the numbers, he recruited as any program in the county.  During the time period I studied, USC averaged 894.  Jim Tressel wasn’t too bad during his tenure as he averaged 769 which is better than the second place team during the period (Miami-FL) which averaged 707.  Ohio State was 3rd at 692.

Based on the numbers it is safe to say that both Cooper and Tressel recruited very well during there tenure and Tressel did more once the kids got to school.  As a point of comparison, Urban Meyer’s 2005-2008 classes at Florida has averaged 734.  For what it is worth, both Tressel and Meyer have two years left until their kids are gone from Ohio State/Florida respectively.

I personally respect the job that Cooper did and know better than most just how close he was to being an all-time great.  He should have won at least 4 more Michigan games (at a minimum 1990,1992,1996,1997) and if that happened he finished at 6-6 and his reputation much better.  If only it were true.

I hope Urban Meyer is successful and the results of the last season back that up and there’s no reason to believe it is an anomaly.  That should not diminish Jim Tressel’s era as his recruiting was top notch and we were lucky to have him.