For a number of years I have computed a composite rating for players that takes into account ratings from Scout, Rivals, and ESPN, and also the competitive offers received by recruits. My concept is while one individual rater may be right sometimes and wrong other times, the more different people that look at a player and think he is good, the more likely it is that he really is good. The actual method of combining, or the specific number isn't that significant, just the fact that I do it the same way every year. The average per player for Freshmen has risen steadily since 2006, going 174, 179, 226, 253, and. 227, but there is a huge jump to 296 this year. It gets even more interesting when you look at the actual players. Here are the incoming Freshmen since 2006 ranked 234 or better:
2006 Horace Hubbard 348
2006 Terrance McCrae 344
2006 Ernie Hodge 276
2006 Taylor Price 234
2007 Noah Keller 289
2007 Donte Harden 269
2007 Joe Flading 243
2008 Bakari Bussey 444
2008 Matt Britain 403
2008 Gerald Moore 371
2008 Tremayne Scott 322
2009 John Lechner 482
2009 Xavier Hughes 368
2009 John Taylor 248
2009 Gary Fortune 243
2010 Nathan Carpenter 347
2010 Mark Smith 288
2010 Josh Kristoff 258
2010 Chase Cochran 256
2010 Jamal Torrant 243
2010 Anthony Grady 241
Note that this list includes about 4 each year, a total of 21 from the 5 years. Note that it also includes many players that turned out to be very good, and a few that weren't able to play due to injury, or who ended up leaving school. Now look at the 2011 class:
2011 Ben Russell 465
2011 Landon Smith 442
2011 Antwan Crutcher 439
2011 Eric Price 389
2011 Tony Davis 375
2011 Jacob Welter 357
2011 Lorenzo Fisher 344
2011 Aaron Macer 326
2011 Tyler Knight 308
2011 Mike McQueen 304
2011 Justin Haser 303
2011 Brad Spivey 290
2011 Kyle Hammonds 280
2011 Ian Wells 276
2011 Andrew Bennett 272
2011 Derrius Vick 246
2011 Brandon Purdum 243
2011 Lucas Powel 240
2011 Ronnie Bell 232

Hmmm......19 in the 2011 class, 21 combined in the 2006-2010 classes. If these numbers have any validity, Ohio should be fun to watch the next few years.

Your comments echo my observations. Clearly  there were talented players recruited prior to Solich, but in the early  years the Solich classes were generally better because of improvement on the bottom end: there were fewer "projects" that just didn't work out. Now we are seeing improvement at the upper end, too.

Thanks, great work, L.C.  Some might argue that Landon Smith's spring ball lends credence.

Indeed there have been many good players that came in from Juco, including the Leftwich twins, and many highly ranked players that transferred from other four year schools. The list above, however, includes only players who came to Ohio as Freshmen. One of my points is that, as Ohio recruits better Freshmen, they have less need to rely on Jucos and transfers for core needs.

Oops, good catch. He should not have been in that list, nor should Spivey. I do have scores for Jucos and transfers, but I often have to fill in numbers. For example, ESPN never rates the jucos. Also, the market for jucos is thinner, so you don't see many of them choosing Ohio over other offers, or, if they have them, we don't hear about them. For transfers the problems are different, such as the fact that, if they are leaving another school, it may be because they weren't getting the playing time they hoped for, which may mean that their initial rating was too high. Finally, I don't always have ratings on all the xfers, so the data is incomplete. With those flaws in mind, here are some numbers for some of the jucos and xfers:
2006 - Hinton 586
2006 - Bower 476
2007 - Braunstein 469
2007 - Carter 423
2007 - Flintall 361
2008 - Dawson 372
2008 - Jackson 342
2008 - Tafua 251
2009 - Gross 234
2010 - Prior 687
2010 - Omar Leftwich 323
2010 - Kozak 299
2010 - Octavious Leftwich 220
2011 - Knight 308
2011 - Spivey 290

The transfers and jucos don't really trend like the freshmen. It is more hit or miss. They take what they get, and fill in where they need, and some years what they get is better than others.

Lol, doc, its just a number. All it means is that he had a lot of offers, and good ratings from the services. I think that's a pretty typical number for recruits at Top 10 schools. In the end he still needs to produce on the field.