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How can Florida adjust?

(Editor’s Note: Perhaps the question I’ve been asked most since  Early Signing Day Flipmas is “what can Florida do differently?” To answer that question, I reached out to someone who has spent more time thinking about this than I have, Bud Davis. Bud is a Ph.D. scientist by training, but has a way of visualizing data that can give us an idea of what works and what doesn’t, particularly as we enter this new era of conference realignment, NIL and the transfer portal. Follow Bud on X at @jbuddavis, and you can also get a lot of his thoughts on the Gators Breakdown discord chat as well.)

The Basic Idea

If you’ve followed me on Twitter (@jbuddavis)  you’ve probably seen me preaching various aspects of this strategy for the past year plus. But when Will asked if I’d be interested in sharing it on Read & Reaction, without the 140 tweet character limit, I knew I’d have to jump at the opportunity. I think the basic idea is something like this:

• Spend NIL in a manner that reflects the expected value of your players & recruits
• Quantify the potential risk of losing players to the portal
• Positions like OT & LB turn recruiting advantages into in-game points better than other positions
• Prioritize elite trench players out of HS
• Take advantage of the abundance of skill position players in the portal
• Focus on your natural recruiting footprint & achieving zero-sum recruiting wins against your annual rivals
• Utilize the high rate of roster turnover provided by the portal as a tool for filtering out known non-contributors
• Leverage NIL as a carrot & a stick to entice elite talent and weed out non-contributors

Expected Value

Teams should spend NIL in acquiring HS recruits in a manner that reflects the expected value of the player. Using well established relationships between NFL on-field production, the NFL draft, and composite recruit rankings, we can establish an “expected value” for the on-field contribution of each recruit rank.

We see that this expected value is exponential, where the top HS recruits provide significantly more on-field value than lower ranked recruits. On average, the Top 200 recruits in a recruiting class will provide roughly the same cumulative on-field value as the Bottom 2800 recruits. If I were in charge of Florida’s NIL, I’d begin with the composite recruit ranks and then adapt the rankings based on internal player evaluations. I’d utilize the same expected value-rank relationship as above, to develop an internal estimate of the value of each HS recruit. 

Transfer Risk

Another factor that must be weighed in NIL estimates during the player acquisition phase is the likelihood of a player to transfer. It would be a waste of Florida’s NIL resources to heavily invest in a HS player who spends 1-2 seasons playing underclassmen-level snaps, before transferring to another program and playing meaningful snaps. Therefore, the transfer probability of a player must be quantified in order to understand the potential risk of losing this NIL investment.

Luckily, there do appear to be some statistically significant trends about which players are more likely to transfer than others. Players at skill positions like QB, RB, WR, CB, and S are all more likely to transfer than players at trench positions like LB, DL, TE, Edge, IOL, and OT.

Additionally, players who are further from home show higher rates of transfers than more-local recruits. Combining the various factors that appear to correlate with transfer risk from the linked study above could be utilized to develop a risk estimate for every recruit and help inform an appropriate, risk-balanced, NIL offering portfolio. 

High School vs. Portal Strategy

Elite recruiting is advantageous at all positions, but recruiting advantages at trench positions like OT & LB provide more in-game value than positions like TE & S (figures showing this are later in this article). Coupling this advantage with a low risk of transfer, teams should prioritize obtaining elite trench players out of HS. This strategy ensures a team isn’t scrambling to obtain one of the limited number of quality OTs in the portal every year. 

Teams should focus on supplementing their rosters with elite transfers at skill positions. Skill players enter the portal at a higher rate than trench players, which provides less competition for individual players. Additionally, many skill position statistics have been shown to be extremely stable and predictive (e.g., yards/route run), which make them lower-risk dice rolls than their trench counterparts. It’s not an accident that five of the last seven Heisman trophy winners are transfer QBs, with the only two exceptions being highly rated recruits who played their entire careers at Alabama. There is elite skill position talent to be had in the portal, and teams should use it to supplement their roster at key opportunities.

Zero Sum Recruiting

Teams should prioritize recruiting their local footprint and beating out annual rivals for high expected value recruits. As stated above, recruits from the local footprint (~300 mi) provide a lower transfer risk of transfer than from those hailing from more distant hometowns. A lower risk of transfer means these local players are more stable expected value assets. 

Head-to-head recruiting recruiting battles provide some of the largest expected value swings in CFB. Because recruiting is zero sum, the recruiting wins for one program ensure recruiting losses for peer programs. Winning these zero sum recruiting battles against annual competition is the most effective way to turn recruiting victories into on field results. Florida beating FSU or Georgia for a given recruit, provides more on-field value for Florida than beating Miami (2024 schedule, excluded) or Clemson. Ensuring your on-field opponents have to consistently settle for their second choice is an effective strategy for building out a large recruiting advantage over a small amount of head-to-head recruiting battles. 

Encourage the Right Transfers

Every team in CFB will lose players to the portal; teams should be actively involved in using the portal so high value players are maximized and low value players are minimized. The bulk of transfers in CFB involve players moving down in competition level. Many players, who appeared suitable for P5 competition out of HS, are in actuality better suited for G5 programs or the non-FBS level. 

Far more P5 to G5 or non-FBS transfers than G5 or non-FBS to P5.

In the portal era, the teams that can shed non-contributor players effectively can turn the portal from a talent-sapping entity into essentially free draft picks and dice rolls on new recruits or portal additions. To accomplish this, teams must develop and consistently assess how every player is meeting internal development metrics. Players not on internal development timelines should be encouraged to enter the portal. Removing these types of non-contributors helps free up NIL resources for other players and opens up scholarships for high-upside HS players or portal additions. With a more lean and honed roster, NIL can be better allocated to players providing the most value to the team. With more roster spots open, it is easier to advertise future playing time and take larger HS classes (more free draft picks!). 

Roster NIL Allocations

Teams should allocate NIL as both a carrot & a stick. One stick-method might be to provide a base NIL package to every member of the team that renews at the start of internal development metric assessment periods. For players that are being encouraged to enter the portal, this contract can simply not be renewed. Teams might also carrot-method NIL rewards to the 20-30 players that provide significant value to a team in a given season. The figures below highlight the average contribution for each team member given their position and rank on the depth chart, first for the offense and then for the defense.

Visualizations like this can guide NIL distributions but should be coupled with internal metrics to better reflect player development & contributions. Rewarding key contributors ensures that the players most important to the program are appropriately valued. Be like the guys who play on Sunday, pay every player, but don’t pay every player the same. 

A Texas Case Study

Steve Sarkisian took over Texas in January 2021 and executed a roster flip that roughly aligns with the strategy outlined above. Between the 2021-2023 portal cycles, Texas sent 58 players to the portal, while only signing 18. This high rate of roster churn allowed Sarkisian to trim the fat from his roster and bring in large HS recruiting classes with higher upside than known roster non-contributors. Critical to this process was identification of which players Texas could not afford to lose during this rebuild. Despite a high rate of portal exits among inherited players, 7 of Texas’ current 22 starters are upperclassmen not recruited by Sarkisian. Additionally, 3 other inherited players (Gbenda, Collins, Crawford) have provided significant starts over his tenure. There are few upperclassmen on Texas’ roster who haven’t been critical to Sarkisian’s rebuild. Outside a few very limited success stories, there are only a few outgoing Longhorn transfers who went on to successful P5 careers. Texas did a great job moving on from the talent it didn’t need and retaining the talent it did.

Between the 2021 and 2023 recruiting cycles Texas signed 3 large and high expected value classes. This includes a 23 man transition class, a 28 man bump class, and a 25 man third-year class. Across these 76 signees were 14 Top 100 recruits and 37 players at trench positions (DL/OL/LB). These high school signees make up 13 of Texas’ current starting 22. Notable true freshman among these include former five-stars Anthony Hill Jr. (#2 LB 2023 class) and CJ Baxter (#1 RB 2023 class) (Ed. Note: Baxter is from Orlando, ugh). Supplementing this highly talented roster are 18 transfers, including 2 starters: Quinn Ewers (#1 QB 2021 class) and Adonai Mitchell (#63 WR 2021 class; 428 yds & 53 tgts as Fr. at UGA). Prioritizing elite trench talent at high school and taking advantage of high upside skill position portal entrants has allowed Texas to field a roster than can not only compete for a championship in 2023, but should be competitive for years down the line. 

Conclusions

With NIL & the transfer portal, developing a roster with high on-field expected value must be approached similarly to how NFL teams approach the problem. We do have to acknowledge that there are some differences, namely no CBA, salary cap, defined free-agency guidelines, or player contracts; the complexities of modern CFB recruiting pose a daunting optimization problem.

In addition to the concepts outlined above, I contend that many teams would benefit from a GM position to help manage modern CFB roster construction. Handing off much of the responsibilities for recruiting, the portal, roster management, and NIL to a GM, would allow a Head Coach to focus more on player development, scheme, practice, and playcalling. A segregated set of GM & HC positions would help prevent situations where the best interests of a HC might not align with the long term best interests of a football program (e.g., a HC sacrificing HS recruiting to invest all of the NIL in transfers to try to save their job). This GM could provide significant continuity across HC changes, and reduce the negative impacts of a coaching change, transition class, and portal exodus.

Overall, every team in CFB would benefit from a well defined, long-term, roster and NIL management strategy. While recruiting rankings are one way to approach this strategy, many programs should be able to generate an expected value for recruits and players using internal evaluation metrics. While the data and trends discussed above can provide insight into solutions to this problem, these strategies should be considered flexible and teams must adapt to the individual issues associated with their specific recruits, players, and roster.