Who are Mizzou's main recruiting opponents?
Since Barry Odom took over as Missouri’s football coach in 2016, the Tigers have signed 70 players. In analyzing which schools Odom and his staff had to beat out most frequently to land those prospects, two schools tie for the lead.
One is Illinois, which makes some sense. Football recruiting is more geographically focused than, say, basketball, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Tigers and Illini often have their eyes on the same players.
The other? Texas-San Antonio.
A debate recently arose on our site’s message boards over whether Missouri should have to battle the likes of Illinois and Iowa State to land football recruits. Some fans believe the Tigers belong in a class above those schools, and that recruiting results should generally reflect that. I sought to settle the debate by using the Rivals database (disclaimer: it’s probably not 100 percent accurate for every player) to determine the schools Missouri has most often battled in recruiting over the past five years. In doing so, I hoped to establish a list of schools that can be expected to have a similar, if slightly lower, talent level than Missouri.
A few notes about the process: While the Rivals database may be missing a few offers, the five-year period (Missouri signed 122 players in that time frame) should provide a large enough sample size to overcome that. I chose to only include players that actually signed with Missouri both because the staff offers a huge number of players each year, so tracking down all those players would have been impossible, and because that ensures that we’re only dealing with players that seriously considered Missouri--and in the end considered Mizzou their best option. Finally, I broke the data down into several subsets, which will be explained further.
One final note: Do not take all of this to mean Missouri has recruited at the same level as UTSA over the past three years. To my knowledge, the Tigers have never lost a coveted prospect to the Roadrunners, and the high UTSA interest in Missouri signees is easily explainable: Missouri has signed a lot of players from Texas, and UTSA apparently offers nearly every in-state player in the hope that his recruitment won’t expand to Power 5 schools. The one other easily explainable outlier that pops up is Memphis, which has offered a bunch of Missouri signees since 2015 — when Odom came to Missouri after serving as Memphis’ defensive coordinator, and likely continued recruiting a lot of the targets he had offered at Memphis. Aside from that, I believe the schools present here represent those that Missouri recruits against most frequently.
Total offers, since 2014
Schools that offered the most Missouri signees since 2014 (number of offered players in parentheses):
1. Illinois (31)
2. Indiana (27)
3. Iowa State (23)
4. Cincinnati (21)
5. Memphis (18)
6. Kansas (17)
6. Kansas State (17)
8. Tulane (16)
8. Nebraska (16)
10. UTSA (15)
10. Louisville (15)
Those of you hoping to see that Missouri is a class above Illinois and Iowa State in recruiting: there are two ways to interpret this data. On one hand, clearly Missouri is targeting similar talent as the Illini, and all the other schools on this list. That’s probably not what you want to hear, since the teams at the top of this list haven’t exactly reveled in on-field success of late. The top four teams — Illinois, Indiana, Iowa State and Cincinnati — have combined for three winning seasons since 2014. They’ve won exactly one bowl game between them — Iowa State this season.
On the other hand, Missouri’s recruiting classes over the past five years have consistently ranked above those from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa State, Cincinnati and Memphis. That suggests that, while those schools may be targeting the same prospects as Missouri, the Tigers beat those schools for recruits more often than they lose. Still, most Tiger fans probably would like to see the team in more accomplished company when it comes to recruiting. If that’s you, I don’t have good news.
Before and after Barry Odom
Schools that offered Missouri signees in Gary Pinkel’s last two recruiting classes (2014 and 2015):
1. Indiana (16)
2. Illinois (12)
3. Cincinnati (10)
4. Louisville (9)
4. Iowa State (9)
4. Nebraska (9)
4. Minnesota (9)
Schools that offered Missouri signees during Odom’s first four recruiting classes (2016 through 2019):
1. UTSA (15)
1. Illinois (15)
3. Iowa State (14)
4. Memphis (12)
4. Tulane (12)
6. Indiana (11)
6. Cincinnati (11)
6. Kansas (11)
The first thing I wanted to analyze was how Missouri's recruiting competition has changed since Odom took over. The two lists have several names in common, but the differences seem to back up Rivals' recruiting rankings, which have generally seen Missouri fall since Odom took over. In Pinkel’s final two recruiting classes, only one school from outside a Power Five conference, Cincinnati, consistently targeted prospects that signed with Missouri. Half of the top eight schools during Odom’s first three recruiting classes (and I threw in Missouri’s two 2019 commits, too, just to have more data) come from outside the Power Five — and that’s not including Kansas, whose football woes have been well-documented. In sum, beating out Tulane for recruits more often and Nebraska less often is a good indicator that a team is signing lower-rated talent.
In-state vs. out-of-state
Schools that have extended offers to in-state prospects who ultimately signed with Missouri:
1. Illinois (14)
2. Kansas (10)
3. Nebraska (9)
4. Iowa State (9)
5. Indiana (8)
6. Kansas State (8)
7. Arkansas (7)
Schools that have extended offers to out-of-state prospects who ultimately signed with Missouri:
1. Indiana (19)
2. Cincinnati (17)
3. UTSA (15)
4. Tulane (15)
5. Iowa State (14)
6. Illinois (13)
7. Memphis (13)
One thing that appeared to hold true in both Pinkel’s final two years and Odom’s first three: Missouri typically beat out better competition for in-state talent than out-of-state recruits. That competition was usually regional — six of the top seven schools that offered in-state players who signed with Missouri (note: I included players from East St. Louis, Illinois, and the Kansas City, Kansas area as in-state) come from states that border Missouri. While plenty of Tiger fans have bemoaned the staff’s struggle to attract elite in-state talent, often for good reason, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Missouri has a much better chance of beating out high-major programs for in-state prospects than players from outside state lines.
Missouri compared to other SEC schools
Other SEC schools that offered players signed by Missouri during Pinkel's final two years (2014 and 2015):
1. Arkansas (7)
1. Auburn (7)
3. Kentucky (6)
3. Tennessee (6)
3. Mississippi State (6)
6. Ole Miss (5)
6. Florida (5)
8. Georgia (4)
9. Alabama (3)
9. LSU (3)
9. Vanderbilt (3)
13. South Carolina (1)
13. Texas A&M (1)
Other SEC schools that offered players signed by Missouri during Odom’s first three years (2016-2019):
1. Kentucky: 7
2. Ole Miss: 6
3. Vanderbilt: 5
4. Arkansas: 4
4. South Carolina: 4
4. Texas A&M: 4
7. Alabama: 3
8. Tennessee: 2
8. Mississippi State: 2
10. Georgia: 1
10. Florida: 1
10. Auburn: 1
10. LSU: 1
One final conclusion that I drew from my research: Missouri went up against, and beat, fellow SEC teams in recruiting battles significantly more often in Pinkel’s final two seasons than it has under Odom. The main reason the numbers look so much better for 2014 and 2015 is that Pinkel landed two key signees — Terry Beckner Jr. and Dorial Green-Beckham — who drew offers from nearly every school in the league. Perhaps the biggest knock on Odom and his staff has been its inability to land players, especially local players, when big-name schools from across the country come calling. This list indicates there's something to that perception.
In conclusion
My main takeaway from this research was that, yes, Missouri has shown that it can generally land recruits over Illinois and Iowa State. But those schools, along with the likes of Indiana, Cincinnati and Kansas, are the best the Tigers have beaten out on a regular basis in the past five years. And since Odom took over, the quality of opponents Missouri has beat out — and thus, the quality of talent it has landed — has slipped even further. That is especially apparent when compared to the rest of the SEC. In order to contend in the league, Missouri needs to continue its "diamond in the rough" approach. But it also needs to not only take on schools from across the country in recruiting battles, but win at least one or two of those battles each year.