Is it a big deal that nobody committed following Friday Night Lights?

So Friday Night Lights is over and as of this writing, no 2019 recruits have committed to the Florida Gators.

That seems like a big deal. It certainly isn’t doing anything to quench the anxiety that an ever-growing portion of the Florida fan base is starting to feel about this recruiting cycle.

It’s no secret that the Gators are behind on the recruiting trail. It’s also not a secret that this is the premier recruiting event that Florida has hosted yearly ever since Urban Meyer came to town.

Of course, it’s also only a day old. Expectations that seven blue-chip recruits would commit on the spot were never realistic.

Which raises the question, what is a realistic expectation of commitments based on past Friday Night Lights?

Historical recruiting after Friday Night Lights

Friday Night Lights was instituted by Urban Meyer in July of 2005. He then followed that up with a class ranked second nationally that included Percy Harvin, Tim Tebow and Brandon Spikes.

But interestingly, none of those players committed anywhere close to FNL.  In fact, none of the members of the 2006 recruiting class committed close to FNL.

The logic that players would be charged up from FNL and immediately commit sounds great. The problem is, it just doesn’t appear to be based in fact when looking at history.

The chart below shows commitments that occurred between July 15 to August 31 each recruiting cycle from 2006-2017, removing years when there was a coaching transition. Those years were eliminated because in a transition year, the coach who operates FNL is not the one who eventually receives recruits letters of intent.

The dates were selected to include those who committed in the excitement leading up to the event but still capture those who took until the season started to make their decision to commit.

Recruit commitments from July 15 to August 31 for Florida coaches in non-transition years. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

The data shows that FNL has not been much of a boon to recruiting at all, at least not immediately. The Gators have averaged 2.5 recruit commitments in these years. Only three 5-star candidates have signed during this time-frame: Torrey Davis (2007), D.J. Humphries (2012) and Vernon Hargreaves III (2013).

The highest number of commitments was five for Will Muschamp in 2013 and Jim McElwain in 2016. Of course, of those 10 commitments, seven of them were 3-star candidates.

What this indicates is that expectations of four or five commits immediately after FNL is misguided, particularly if the expectation is that commits will be blue-chip quality recruits. That just hasn’t happened in the history of the event.

This doesn’t mean that FNL was a waste of time. Stories of Tebow’s and Cam Newton’s time during FNL and how that affected their careers can be found fairly easily, and I’m sure that’s the story of many players who have eventually decided to come to Gainesville.

It’s just that those players generally decide to come later in the year.

Why is this important?

Understanding that the floodgates for commitments don’t typically open immediately after FNL is important for two reasons.

First, it is important because any criticism of Dan Mullen for his inability to close can’t point to FNL as evidence. Urban Meyer only had four commits at this time in 2005 and didn’t add another until Riley Cooper committed in mid-October. Admittedly those four players were all blue-chip caliber, but Mullen has four blue-chip commits currently as well.

There appear to be valid reasons to criticize Mullen and his staff on the recruiting front, but this shouldn’t be one of them. The expectations that the Gators would bring in more than three blue-chip recruits from now until September just isn’t likely based on what has happened before.

In fact, I would submit that if Mullen can bring in four or five blue-chip recruits before the season starts, we need to acknowledge that he has done something none of his predecessors have been able to do.

The second reason understanding the floodgates probably won’t open is more concerning. As I’ve written previously, recruiting classes don’t appear to improve significantly from an overall national ranking perspective after August 1. The volume of recruits changes, but the quality usually gets just slightly better.

And that’s concerning for Florida because August 1 is only three days away and the Gators have an 11-man class with an average star ranking of 3.36, an average national ranking of 505, a blue-chip percentage of 36 and a 247Sports average rating of 88.3. That rating would rank behind 20 Power-5 teams currently and would have placed Florida around 19th nationally for the 2018 recruiting cycle.

Let’s say Mullen were to get commitments from Diwun Black (4-star, 53 nationally), Keon Zipperer (4-star, 125 nationally) and Lloyd Summerall (4-star, 205 nationally) following FNL. That would tie him for the most blue chip recruits ever committed during the July 15 to August 31 time-frame at Florida during the FNL era.

It also would increase the Gators average 247Sports ranking to 89.6, which would vault Florida past 6 of those 20 teams with higher rankings and pull them dead even with Tennessee. Oregon had the 13th ranked class nationally last season with a 247Sports ranking of 89.18, which was the first time a team with a ranking lower than 89.6 appeared.

Takeaway

I never would have dreamed with the way Mullen put together his transition recruiting class and the recruiting history of Florida coaches not named McElwain that the Gators would be staring at 13th nationally as a best-case scenario. But that’s where we are.

I hope Mullen bucks all of the historical precedents that I – and my colleagues – keep pointing towards.

• Rarely does a coach have a lower bump recruiting class than his transition recruiting class (Mullen’s already done it once, according to Bill Sikes).
• Rarely does the quality of a recruiting class improve significantly after the season starts.
• Rarely does a Florida coach bring in a massive haul immediately after Friday Night Lights.

Counteracting one of those trends or even two might be doable. At some point, I look at all this and just get discouraged.

Might this be an outlier where recruits are waiting to see what Florida shows on the field? I doubt it, but let’s say that’s the case. What happens if Florida struggles and goes 6-6 in 2018? What happens if the offense continues to sputter and continues to be boring? Or what if it turns out Mullen just isn’t a good recruiter even if he does get the Gators to perform up to its talent level on the field?

I don’t think it is fair to expect Mullen to show an immediate recruiting uptick coming off of FNL. That much is clear looking at the numbers. I believe anybody criticizing him for his recruiting based solely off the next month is misguided. We shouldn’t expect – nor is it likely – that he is going to produce a massive haul of commits in the immediate aftermath of Friday Night Lights.

But the problem is that he may have dug himself such a significant hole that he needs it.