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A Look At NFL Draft First-Round Trends, By School

Apr 23, 2010, 5:45 PM UTC

Thursday night’s first round was odd for more than the obvious reasons that people keep writing about. You know, the Tim Tebow thing and Dez Bryant’s fall and Jimmy Clausen not getting picked at all. Sure, those happenings made the draft as intriguing as the NFL had hoped a prime time draft could be, but there was something else that made it odd: the schools from which the players were drafted.â†µ

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â†µâ†µBoth ESPN and NFL Network made a very big deal – with good reason – at the Big 12’s dominance at the top of the draft. More specifically, Oklahoma came away as the clear winner of the first round, seeing four Sooners get drafted in the first 21 picks. Sure, there were two players picked from Florida and two from Alabama, but can you remember a draft where players were taken in the first round from schools like Rutgers and South Florida and Idaho and Boise State and TCU and Fresno State? Can you remember a draft where players from schools like USC or Notre Dame or Ohio State or Miami or Virginia Tech or LSU or Wisconsin were not taken in the first round? â†µ

â†µâ†µSo, was the 2010 first round just an anomaly for some schools, or is this a trend in where NFL first-round prospects are deciding to go to school? To look at any recruiting cycle, you have to research five years back (to account for redshirts and transfers, etc). So let’s look at some of the top schools in the NFL draft first round, from 2006-2010.â†µ

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â†µIt's clear a few schools have dominated the first round over the last five years, with Ohio State leading the way with 10 selections, despite not having any first-rounders this year. USC has also been a mainstay at the top of the draft, with nine in the last five years, despite none in the 2010 draft. Florida State, Tennessee and LSU are next with seven each over the past five years. For LSU, four of those picks were taken in the first round of the 2007 draft and just two have come since. For FSU, Patrick Robinson was taken with the last pick in the first round and it was just the second first-rounder for the Seminoles since 2006.â†µ

â†µâ†µFlorida and Oklahoma dominated the 2010 first round, with three and four picks, respectively, to total six apiece since 2006. It’s interesting, however, that Oklahoma didn’t have a first-round pick since 2007 before taking over this year’s first round. Texas, with one pick in this year’s first round, also has six over this span.â†µ

â†µâ†µAlas, for some teams, listed above the one-year absence from the first round is hardly reason to panic. Those teams have shown that they still recruit elite, top-level NFL talent over the last five years. Some other teams … not so much. â†µ

â†µâ†µWhile Miami has had five players selected in the first round since 2006, just one has been taken in the last three drafts. Georgia had two first-rounders in 2009 with top-pick Matthew Stafford and 12th-pick Knowshon Moreno, but they are the only two first-rounders for the Bulldogs in this timeframe. â†µ

â†µâ†µNotre Dame has had just one first-rounder since 2006: Brady Quinn. Virginia Tech has had just one first rounder in that time frame as well, as Duane Brown was taken 26th overall in the 2008 draft. And while Joe Thomas was the third overall pick in the 2007 draft out of Wisconsin, he’s the only Badger to be taken at any point in the first round in the last five drafts. Of course, that’s better than some BCS mainstays like West Virginia that had zero players drafted in the last five first-rounds.â†µ

â†µâ†µSo it may be too early to proclaim the likes of Rutgers and Georgia Tech and Oklahoma State the new breeding ground for first-round talent, but it is rather glaring where some of that talent hasn’t been going.â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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