Analyzing The Impact of Recruiting Talent In College Football’s 2022 Season
An exploratory data analysis of how well talent predicted victory or defeat in college football — and what it means for TCU’s hopes of winning it all
A rare level of competitiveness between teams made the 2022 college football season especially thrilling.
There were upsets. Fields were stormed. Goalposts were dislodged. And Michigan beat Ohio State in the horseshoe.
And then there was the curious case of Texas Christian University making it to the college football playoff.
Context matters. TCU’s playoff trip is an outlier; They are one of the few teams outside the top 15 composite talent rankings ever to make it to the playoffs (Cincinnati and Washington being the others).
Talent rankings measure a team’s recruiting talent, where each recruit is ascribed a point value. The more recruiting points a team has, the higher they are in the talent rankings.
For this year’s playoff teams, we have the following talent rankings:
- Georgia ranked 2nd
- Michigan ranked 13th
- TCU ranked 32nd
