Spending A Lot Of Money On College Football Recruiting Does Not Guarantee Success

Yesterday we took a look at the schools that spent the most money on recruiting football players in 2010 and 2011. At the top of the list was Tennessee, a school that averaged $1.3 million in recruiting expenses over a two year period. And yet their football team went just 1-7 in the SEC this past season (5-7 overall). Of course, this could explain why Derek Dooley was fired at the end of the year.

Below is a look at the relationship between spending money on recruiting in 2010-11 and the number of wins in 2012. And while there is only two years of expense data, and more than two years worth of players, we can see, there is no relationship (R2 = 0.0002).

The lack of any relationship is surprising as there could have been a reverse-relationship. That is, teams that win a lot of games will have more revenue, which in turn will give them a bigger budget for recruiting. But this chart suggests that teams that are spending a lot are doing so needlessly...