NFL Draft Order vs. Recruiting Rankings 2013

Last year we tracked the NFL draft to analyze how succesful the college recruiting services were at predicting players’ future NFL draft success.  

You can see our analysis of the 2012 draft here.  

Well, as you have probably guessed, its that time of year again! 

Not only will we provide you with the raw data and analysis for this year’s crop of draft picks, but we’ll also compare the performances of the recruiting services’ predictive abilities across the 2012 and 2013 drafts. 

We base our analysis on Rivals.com’s rankings, not because we’re picking on Rivals.com, but because Rivals.com happens to have the most robust data tools (Scout.com and 24/7, we’re looking at you).

This blog post will evolve over the weekend as the draft moves forward, and keeping up with draft’s progress will be tall order for me as I will be on the road throughout the weekend. 

Nevertheless, duty calls!

Editors Note:  Based on our analysis of the first two rounds, Rivals.com (and likely the rest of the recruiting services) are performing worse than last year - you can thank the slew of athletes who took unconventional routes to football for that.  

As hard as it may seem to believe, there actually are athletes that exist outside of the recruiting service hosted ‘talent camps.’

Round 4 Update:  (I’m behind, I know. Notable observation: 18 five-stars through four rounds compared to 9 five-stars through four rounds in 2012.  I wish I had been in town over the weekend - I would have been killing it on twitter!!). 

Round 1: Draft Selection and College Recruiting Ranking by Player

Round 2: Draft Selection and College Recruiting Ranking by Player

Round 3: Draft Selection and College Recruiting Ranking by Player

Round 4: Draft Selection and College Recruiting Ranking by Player

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The Amazing World of Skateistan

Kabul’s DIY Skateboard Workshop: Skateistan Launches Afghan- Native American Exchange | Good

Skateboarding. Afghanistan. Kids. Education.

Watch the video.  

Donate if you can. 

We’re putting up a button (to left) to keep it in your conciousness. 

Update: This is a total coincidence, but I just stumbled across  a Financial Times piece featuring an article on Skateistan.  You might need a paid subscription to read the whole article, so just in case here is a sampling:

On September 8 last year, a teenage boy detonated a suicide bomb at the gates of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Kabul, Afghanistan. Four of the six people killed were street children who regularly gathered at the gate to sell trinkets, scarves and chewing gum to Nato personnel. The 14-year-old suicide bomber had pretended to be one of them to get up close to the Isaf gates, blowing the small group apart when he detonated his device.

In the context of the Afghan conflict, this was not particularly unusual. More than 1,800 children were killed or injured in conflict-related violence across Afghanistan in 2010-11. What was different in this case was that these weren’t anonymous street kids, they were Skateistan children – part of a unique skateboarding project in the heart of Kabul. Within hours, social media was alive with the children’s faces, grinning up from poses on a half-pipe, kids with scuffed shinpads and shy smiles.

snip

It took a tragedy to show the world what Skateistan does. The project, a sprawling 1,750m sq complex of ramps, classrooms, bathrooms and offices on land that once belonged to the Afghan Olympic Committee in Kabul, is built on cultural contradictions. Girls in headscarves – usually banned from taking part in sports – fly through the air on the skateboards. Street children who have worked from the age of five experience moments of genuine childhood. Dusty Afghan streets resonate with sounds and words that originate from Californian surf culture 7,000 miles away. The rebellious subculture that speaks to millions of kids in US high-schools and among European highrises turns out to speak to Afghan children too.

NFL

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Like you didn’t know… 

Profile of an NFL Fanbase: Are all 13 year old girls bandwagon fans? | Harvard Sport Analysis

It’s pretty easy to see the trend. The teams most popular with girls are those who have recently done very well. Recent Super-Bowl champs like the Saints, Steelers, and Packers are all top-perfomers among women. On the other end of the spectrum, perennially bad teams such as the Bills, Loins, and Rams rank very low with fanbases close to 70% male.

The Cowboys, as if we have seen before, are an outlier here again. Despite no recent triumphs they do very well among women. Even more odd is if we look at the breakdown of Cowboys fans by age. Compared to all NFL teams, the Cowboys do (relatively poorly) among men 13-22. When compared to the fan distribution of other teams, they have 30% less fans in this demographic compared to what you would expect. In contrast, the Cowboys are doing very well among women 13-39 with consistently 20% more fans in these demographics than one would expect. In fact, while 63% of all NFL fans between the ages of 13-17 are males, the Cowboys are the only team who have more female fans between the ages of 13 and 17 than male fans.

What Else We’re Reading

Intermission: Inspiring Public Defender Tattoos Names of Clients on his Back | Good

Have a great weekend Sports Dorks!