It’s been said that recruiting rankings are like, among other things, preseason polls. Apparently, "they don’t mean a whole lot.” Still, I have actually found over the years that recruiting rankings and a particular poll—a rather significant one—are certainly meaningful, at least when it comes to their association with the other.

Following yesterday’s release of the final AP Poll for the 2018 season, I compiled below an updated version of a similar analysis I’ve posted in previous years—whether there’s a correlation between Rivals’ annual team recruiting rankings and the yearly final AP Poll.

Beginning with Rivals’ initial team rankings in 2002, and for each subsequent year through 2018, I awarded “Rivals points” as conducted for the AP Poll, allocating 25 points for a No. 1 team recruiting ranking, 24 points for a No. 2, etc. The result was Rivals’ 17-year team recruiting rankings (left). Likewise, for the final AP Poll beginning in 2002 and through the recently released rankings, I awarded points as mentioned, resulting in what is the final AP Poll’s 17-year rankings from 2002 through 2018 (right):

I then found the greatest, what I call, “Overachievers” and “Underachievers” over the last 17 years—FBS programs that somewhat defied the apparent correlation between recruiting rankings and final polls as exhibited above. Presented are the top "Overachievers" (left) from 2002 through 2018, or teams with the greatest positive difference between AP Poll points and Rivals' points—and the top "Underachievers" (right) or teams with the largest negative difference between AP Poll points and Rivals' points:

Still, the likes of overachieving Boise State and TCU, and underachieving Florida State and Tennessee, are only outliners. For the vast majority of FBS programs, there’s a high correlation between where a particular team ranked in recruiting and where the same team ranked in the final AP Poll.

I’ve painfully explained the correlation coefficient here before but, again, in a nutshell: It’s a number between −1 and +1 calculated as to represent the dependence of two variables or sets of data. The nearer the coefficient is to -1, the more negative the correlation between the two sets of numbers. The closer the coefficient is to +1, the more positive the correlation between the two sets of numbers.

In this case, the two sets of data are the point totals for the Rivals rankings and the AP Poll over the last 17 years for all FBS programs, resulting in a correlation coefficient of 0.809 or what is considered a very strong relationship.

Thinking perhaps it takes a year or two for a recruiting class to fully make its impact on the field, I staggered the measuring of the two data sets (e.g., a one-year stagger didn’t measure the two sets straight up—both sets from 2002-2018—but rather measured the Rivals rankings from 2002-2017 staggered with the AP Poll from 2003-2018). Still, considering that the one- and two-year stagger resulted in coefficients of 0.797 and 0.774, respectively, the straight-up, no stagger derived the strongest correlation.

Accordingly, you could say, recruiting rankings—specifically, Rivals’ team recruiting rankings—are indeed “like” polls, at least the most meaningful ones—the final polls. And, at least to me, that means a whole lot.