How much does recruiting matter, anyway?
That’s what some local football fans are asking after — OK, let’s be honest here — that’s what some Utes fans are asking with BYU enjoying its best recruiting campaign in a couple of decades.
The Cougars have the top 2026 recruiting class in the Big 12, according to 247Sports. The Utes currently sit at 10th.
The back and forth comes quickly online, with BYU fans bragging and taunting about their recruiting success, with some Ute fans denying the deficit. One said that, in college football’s transfer portal era, recruiting rankings don’t matter.
As a Westminster University alum, I don’t have a dog in this fight.
But I am curious about the data behind the whole ecosystem. How different are the recruiting histories of BYU and Utah? How big of a deal is getting a four- or five-star prospect? And how might that change in the transfer era?
Utah vs. BYU recruiting
First, let’s just see how the two schools have done in the last few decades when it comes to recruiting.
We have recruiting data for just over the last 20 years for both schools from two recruiting services, 247Sports and Rivals. Fans debate over which is better, so the graph below allows you to pick your favorite. Here’s how the Utes and Cougars have ranked over the years:
No matter which recruiting service you choose, the story is largely the same. Through most of the first decade of the 2000s, the Utes and Cougars were neck and neck in recruiting, before the Utes took a small lead early and a large lead late in the 2010s. The last three recruiting classes, though, have been much closer, with BYU taking a significant lead in the 2026 class so far.
Since transfer recruiting also matters, here’s how the schools stack up in transfer recruiting for as long as 247 Sports has had a specific rank just for that category.
On average, Utah’s had the better rank here, though it’s over a short period, and BYU had better recruits for two seasons.
How much is recruiting worth?
So how much does recruiting matter to what you care about most: wins on the football field?
Luckily, a number of academic researchers have looked at the question. The most commonly cited research paper since 2010, by Cary Caro at Xavier University in 2012, found that “63% to 80% of a team’s success in their respective conference can be attributed to successful recruiting practices” in the SEC, the Big Ten, and the Big 12.
Other researchers have quibbled with that result, though. Three researchers from Lipscomb University found in 2023 that recruiting rankings could explain 36% of the variability in college football standings.
More recent research from a pair of Ohio State researchers, Steven Bergman and Trevon Logan, found that each five-star recruit made it about 4% more likely that a team was to make it to a bowl in what was then the BCS. A follow-up in 2020 estimated that each five-star prospect meant about 0.3 to 0.4 additional wins per season; each four-star meant 0.06 to 0.16 additional wins.
Overall, given that winning football teams make more money than losing ones do, they found that five-star recruits increased annual revenue by $650,000, while four-star recruits increased revenue by roughly $350,000.
What about the new transfer world?
That being said, college football is rapidly changing — by now, the rules for recruiting and transferring schools differ on a year-to-year basis. The above shows the real-world impact of having good football players on your team, but of course, that doesn’t matter if you can’t keep them.
The Athletic looked at the state of college football last season, and found that 40% of college football’s all-league selections in 2024 (they didn’t include honorable mention teams in their list) were transfers. That’s a trend that could continue to rise, but as of now, you could take up to a 40% discount on the above estimates of recruit value.
They also found something that was backed up by work done by a University of Oregon researcher in 2023: transfer quarterbacks are more likely to succeed in the current era than their high school recruit counterparts. There were 11 quarterbacks on the All-Conference teams in the Power 4 last season, nine were recruits.
Meanwhile, recruit-and-stay linebackers were more effective than transfer equivalents. In most other positions, no significant difference was found between recruits and transfers.
Interestingly, in the 2023 season, the 25 teams that gave the most of their snaps to transfer players averaged 7.04 wins; the 25 teams that gave the most snaps to recruits won 8.48 games on average. That may reflect transfer quantity as a sign of program upheaval.
So, yes: recruiting is still significant, and it definitely matters that BYU has made significant strides there in their most recent recruiting class.
It’s not a guarantee, however, of a better football program. Even a decade ago, recruiting wasn’t everything, and there’s evidence its impact has declined somewhat over time.
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