DeShaun Foster, a promising young back?

Interesting analysis. Just a nitpick:

"What this means is that Big Ten rushing figures are likely to be inflated, while the passing statistics of the Pac-10 are likely depressed some."

Shouldn't that be the Big Ten passing stats are depressed?

What this means is that Big Ten rushing figures are likely to be inflated, while the passing statistics of the Pac-10 are likely depressed some. Meanwhile, the opposite is likely to be true for Pac-10 players.

I'm not certain, but this seems like a typo.

I really feel bad for JJ Arrington, I think he needs a mulligan after having his only shot at starting be behind the 2005 Arizona o-line, and being a back up for the 2006 edition. I'm interested to see what Justin Forsett will eventually do in the NFL, he doesn't have the size of Lynch but he's got the speed Lynch doesn't have. And for those trying to keep tabs on the next Cal HB NFL prospect, look out for Jahvid Best.

If they ever have a NCAA Superstars competition, Cal is kicking everybody's ass in the relays.

@1 It says Reggie Bush and Maurice Jones-Drew are promising backs, not DeShaun Foster. The commas in the clause are being used as separators of a list. You're reading isn't grammatically correct.

If I'm being a grammar nazi, I probably shouldn't make a your/you're error.

Nice headway in to a potentially very useful drafting tool. Since the grammar police are out, I'll point out the one that bugs me:

"Our first effort(s) in this arena is the Lewin Career Forecast..."

But it's not worth worrying about. I blame your editor. ;)

In all seriousness, it does seem a little counterintuitive that more long-term WRs came from the conference that passed less, and vice versa for RBs. Despite your disclaimer at the end of the article, I would have still thought that the two would have worked out more evenly if the ratio was nothing more than a confounding factor. My guess is simply statistical deviation, but it was interesting, at that.

Something to consider: if you guys do happen to come up with a few good statistical tools for better analyzing pro prospects, you might consider holding them a little closer to your chest. I certainly appreciate the info you share (and support it by buying PFP!), but there has to be at least one NFL team that would pay lotsa money to have a better edge on drafting. If you give it all away in articles, you'd lose your leverage if you wanted to expand into draft consultation.

Granted, several teams undoubtedly do this kind of research, but I'm willing to bet there's a lot out there that would be more useful than combine numbers for somebody who's willing to look for it.

I've just started to follow college football a little (3rd year)
I still dont get how the conferences work, the playoffs / BCS shizzle.
It all seems to me like a bunch of big money unis deciding to play sucky teams so they make the Bowl games...
The games are cool though. The offensive systems (navy, tex tech) got me totally hooked.

It's an interesting theory, but it just screams "small sample size" to me.

I mean, if you go back to the '99 draft, it would be easy to say that Oregon quarterbacks generally play fairly well in the NFL. You'd have data points in Dan Fouts, Chris Miller (the early 90s edition), and Tony Graziani and Bill Musgrave as fairly well thought-of backups.

And then you'd have gone out and overvalued Akili Smith and Joey Harrington.

Same thing with BYU quarterbacks before the '91 draft. Steve Young and Jim McMahon were giant successes and Marc Wilson was at least serviceable. And then the Detmer brothers and Steve Sarkisian come down the pike.

Obviously, I'm using smaller sample sizes than the article uses, but I'm just trying to illustrate that just one or two players can totally skew a data set and make you see things that aren't there.

Anyway, it's an interesting and promising angle and one that definitely deserves more attention and research. I'll be interested to see what else the numbers show.

Re 11:

If you go back that far though, then the conferences look completely different, and NFL scouting was also very different.

Reggie Bush, promising? I think not!

Just wanted to say it was a good article and a very interesting read

If you want to adjust RB stats in order to predict NFL performance, you have to look at the defenses they play against.

Big Ten RBs produce gaudy stats in college and fail in the NFL because Big Ten defenses fronts are slow (especially upfront). Ask Florida or App St. Go watch tape of Ron Dayne in college. He can't cut in the hole. In a bowl game vs. Georgia, he was totally shut down. In the NFL, holes open quick and close quick. And the holes that do open often open in unexpected places. Quick feet are critical.

Several years ago, in a debate about the relative speeds of defenses between the SEC and Big Ten, someone put up the number of prospects at the combine from each conference at LB and DE. The SEC had almost twice as many as the Big Ten.

15 - The SEC advantage is a myth. That "bigger, faster, stronger" argument would be provable by looking at the top 10 performers in 2006 at offencive and defensive positions in the NFL. If the SEC is faster, as has been claimed for many years, SEC athletes should dominate the "best of the best" list, and they don't. In fact the only position that they have a 30% share of is DB (by tackles). They don't have a WR in yards in the top 20 of NFL stats or in the top 10 in FO stats. I did a spoof blog just using NFL stats and the PAC 10 and schools currently in the ACC have the most "best of best" performers.

while Johnson put up great numbers in 2005 and 2006, few people remember that the Chiefs were ready to cut bait on him in 2004.

I don't understand why you would mention that. It doesn't support your argument at all. All it proves is that the Chiefs very nearly made a big mistake. However, they didn't cut bait on Johnson, and that turned out to be the right move.

The Pac-10 backs aren’t outclassing the Big Ten guys, but they’re the better group of running backs.

I'm not sure I agree with that. By my count, there are 5 RBs from each of those two lists that had 75+ carries last year and had a positive DPAR. The five from the Big Ten have DPAR ranks of 2, 8, 13, 28, and 32. The five from the PAC-10 are 4, 10, 30, 35, and 43. If you compare the total DPAR of the five RBs from each conference, it's 117 to 82 in favor of the Big Ten. To make it even, you'd have to add another Steven Jackson to the PAC-10 list.

Granted, two groups consist of RBs who are at different stages of their careers, and on are different teams, etc. But still, it's a stretch to say that the PAC-10 has produced a better group of RBs. The two groups seem pretty much even to me, if not tilted slightly in favor of the Big Ten.

Also, the sample size is way too small for this. When switching one or two good players completely changes which group is better, then there's just not enough to come to conclusions with.

Good article and initial analysis. I think the editorial bias weakens your argument. If we want to compare the two conferences then we need to compare their body of work. Reading your article I am given the impression that Larry Johnson is probably an inferior back to Onterrio Smith. I have a hard time understanding why MJD and Bush are "the two most promising running backs in football" and Maroney isn't. Are we excluding a player Adrian Peterson from this designation because we aren't waiting for him to fulfill his potential anymore? Cause by my eyes Peterson is "the most promising back in football" and it aint close.

Furthermore when evaluating Big Ten backs you seem to completely overlook Michael Bennett who not only started but made the Pro Bowl in his second year.

Fortunately you give us an excellent mechanism for making a good comparison of Pac Ten v Big Ten rbs. If we assume that NFL scouts are confident then we can probably agree that it is somewhat remarkable that the combined predraft grades or running backs from the two conferences are so similar. And this gives us the ability to almost directly compare the bodies of work of the two groups.

I didn't track down every stat so if I excluded someone who contributed more than I remembered then I apologize; but comparing Dayne, Shea, Wiley, Bennett, Thomas, Duckett, Betts, Wells, Johnson, Askew, Perry, McHugh, Barber, Herron, Maroney, Calhoun from the Big Ten with Canidate, Redmond, Droughns, Foster, Morris, Fargas, Smith, Jackson, Arrington, Bush, White, Drew from the Pac Ten we find the following:

Big Ten

Games: 811

Carries: 5628

Yards: 22981

Ave: 4.08

TDs: 169

Rec: 876

Yards: 7127

Ave: 8.14

TDs: 29

Pac Ten

Games: 514

Carries: 4105

Yards: 17051

Ave: 4.15

TDs: 85

Rec: 791

Yards: 6386

Ave: 8.07

TDs: 25

indicates fairly strong similarity between the overall production of the two groups. I would shade things to the Big Ten because of the huge disparity in TDs but that is also the Larry Johnson factor. Take out the outlier and the numbers are otherwise very close.

#18: Are we excluding a player Adrian Peterson from this designation because we aren’t waiting for him to fulfill his potential anymore? Cause by my eyes Peterson is “the most promising back in football� and it aint close.

I would agree that calling Bush and MJD the most promising RBs in the NFL instead of some of the most promising RBs in the NFL was a bit of a stretch, but they are very promising RBs. I agree with most of the rest of your post as well.

#16: While the superiority of the SEC might or might not be a myth, your argument certainly doesn't debunk it. It's not that the very best SEC players are "bigger, stronger, and faster" than the very best players from other conferences, but rather that the average SEC player is "bigger, stronger, and faster" than the average players in other conferences. In other words, it's harder for a pro prospect to dominate in the SEC because there are fewer "weak links" on SEC teams, which makes it more difficult to create mismatches. There was a guest article on here about a month ago, rating the "football factories". The list was dominated by SEC schools, which would lend support to the notion that the SEC does, in fact, have far more NFL-caliber athletes than other conferences.