College football has no draft, in contrast to its professional counterpart. As acting college football czar for the length of this thought exercise, I’d like to help out our less fortunate Power 5 programs by giving them the opportunity to get the first crack at the most elite prep talent. The way to do it is through a draft. Bill Connelly and Bud Elliott have some serious ideas on how to improve recruiting, so let’s have some fun in here.
Envisioning a 2017 college football draft, where the worst teams pick the best recruits
Let’s even the recruiting scales just a bit for teams and find a way to make this not be terrible for players.
Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images
In 2014, we drafted recruits as fictional expansion GMs, but now we’re gonna draft for actual teams.
The ground rules
- Non-bowl-eligibles take their pick of the recruiting litter, with one guaranteed signee in a regular draft process, and once everyone’s done, the recruiting process proceeds as usual.
- I’m using 2016 records and 2017 signees.
- We’ll suspend disbelief that this could actually happen or that it’s in any way good for the athletes. In our world, the gatekeepers of the Letter Of Intent program have collectively bargained on behalf of drafted recruits to try and make up for players no longer having a choice. The new provision will afford an extra monetary stipend per semester, and maybe they get some sort of scholarship. Anyway, this is just for fun.
- Let’s also say players can only be drafted to Power 5 teams to maintain some semblance of a path to the Playoff. If you want to envision 1-11 Fresno State picking first, that’s fine too.
- To break ties among teams sharing the same record, I’ve used our man Bill Connelly’s S&P+ rankings. They adjust for opponent quality and pace.
The order and the picks:
Team | Record | Pick | Real-life team |
|---|
- One thing to remember about the 2017 class is that there wasn’t a dominant quarterback, like there is for 2018 in Clemson pledge Trevor Lawrence. But I doubt it would stop some teams from taking their pick of a talented signal caller, given the opportunity.
- Rutgers needs offense more than anything else. The Scarlet Knights’ 188 points for last season were second worst in FBS. Taking Cam Akers No. 1 gives you an instant-impact RB who can play on Day 1.
- Kansas plays in the Big 12. If the best pass rusher in the recruiting class is there, you take him.
- You have to love what new coach Jeff Brohm did with Brandon Doughty at Western Kentucky. I figure Brohm would want to build Purdue around a signal caller.
- Arizona would probably like to grab a QB to trigger Rich Rodriguez’s offense. Tua Tagovailoa could very much be that guy. Rodriguez’s offenses have often been more run-reliant with their QBs than other spread systems.
- Most of Notre Dame’s issues stemmed from being unable to stop a nosebleed on defense, especially in the secondary. Grab a playmaker like Jacoby Stevens and shore up a DB corps that will again be young in 2017.
- Oregon’s front seven has often been better than its reputation, but it hasn’t recently. 2017’s defensive tackle class was uncharacteristically deep, and Aubrey Solomon would quiet the doubters.
- Texas didn’t sign any player in the top 100 of the Composite in Tom Herman’s first class. So it’d be nice to help the plucky, underdog Longhorns with an elite player for a change. Stephen Carr would be a nice replacement for D’Onta Foreman at RB.
- The marriage of Jeff Thomas to Kliff Kingsbury’s offense creates the ability to devastate in space.
- Ole Miss needs a top-100 player, as its incredible recruiting has come back down to Earth. There’s also the fact that, despite all the talent Hugh Freeze has brought to Oxford, an elite running back prospect has eluded him.
College football is one sport where you aren’t rewarded for being bad
With blips here and there (see: Texas and Notre Dame), premier programs stay good, and middling programs stay middling.
One great player really can change a program sometimes. For some of these teams, they’re one or two players away from bowls, or at least a huge upset on any given Saturday.
You’d expect most of these players to shine on these teams, given that many of them would be head and shoulders better than most of their teammates the day they step on campus. They wouldn’t run the risk of getting lost among other blue-chippers, either. But that’s probably the only benefit for the players, beyond any extra stipend our parallel universe would offer.
Despite all of its faults, the recruiting ecosystem as we know it does one thing that drafts never can: It offers the athlete a freedom of choice.
