http://www.stanforddaily.com/the-gatekeeper-lance-anderson-and-the-redefinition-of-stanford-football/

College football is a deceptively deterministic sport. For a game that is so celebrated for its spectacular upsets, its thrilling victories and, of course, the coaches roaming the sidelines, it’s surprising if not outright counterintuitive that so much of the game is dependent upon recruiting, an aspect of the game that few people ever get to see.

The numbers bear this out. A comprehensive study of the 2012 college football season by statistician Dave Bartoo found that 76.5 percent of college football games in the BCS Automatic Qualifier conferences could be predicted six months before the season even began, just by analyzing recent recruiting rankings and correcting for home-field advantage. Moreover, recruiting is traditionally been range-bound: teams rarely make massive leaps in that field.