Joe Paterno's 25th-ranked 2005 class, which included future stars Darryl Clark and Sean Lee, came on the heels of consecutive losing seasons in 2003 and 2004.

According to Rivals.com, Michigan has managed to put together the nation’s #20 overall recruiting class despite coming off two consecutive losing seasons. This doesn’t happen often — in the Rivals era (covering the class of 2002 through today), a school has managed to haul in a top-25 recruiting class after two losing seasons just 16 times, an average of exactly two per year. To be honest, I was surprised the number was even that high. I thought I’d take a look at the teams that pulled off the feat, and attempt to (1) explain how they were able to put together a good recruiting class and (2) see how the team fared down the road. In chronological order, here are the schools that finished in the Rivals top 25 team rankings after consecutive losing seasons:

Team/Year: Penn State, 2002 (Rivals.com’s #21 overall class)
Coach: Joe Paterno (34th year at Penn State)
Previous two seasons: 5-7 (2000), 5-6 (2001)
Why?: The back-to-back losing seasons were the first by Penn State in the Paterno era, and came right after a 10-3 1999 team that featured the top two overall picks of the 2000 NFL Draft (Courtney Brown and LaVar Arrington), so Penn State could sell early playing time, a strong winning tradition, and a potential NFL future to their recruits, as well as the chance to play for a legendary head coach who wasn’t going to get fired despite the team’s uncharacteristically poor performance.
How did they fare?: This class wasn’t as strong as it appeared on paper — it featured 11 four-stars, but only four (Levi Brown, Tamba Hali, Jay Alford, and Calvin Lowry) would really live up to their billing, and the class didn’t get much contribution from its two- and three-star players. After a 9-4 2002 season, Penn State would undergo another back-to-back losing stretch (more on that later) before an 11-1 2005 season brought them back to the top of the Big Ten.

Team/Year: Arizona, 2002 (#25)
Coach: John Mackovic (2nd season at Arizona)
Previous two seasons: 5-6 (2000), 5-6 (2001)
Why?: Putting together his first full recruiting class, John Mackovic was a big-name coach (with prior head-coaching stints at Wake Forest, Illinois, and Texas) for a team coming off its best decade in school history. Also, anyone who has been to Arizona knows that it should not be difficult to recruit high school kids to Tucson (a quick Google image search for “University of Arizona” brings up Olympic swimmer — and former Playboy covergirl — Amanda Beard studying in a pool).
How did they fare?: Not so well. Mackovic had to publicly apologize to his players during the 2002 season because of his over-the-top verbal abuse (in the most publicized incident, he called tight end Justin Levasseur a disgrace to his family), and was fired five games into the 2003 season. Arizona finally hit the .500 mark in 2006, and wouldn’t field a winning team until 2008. You’ll be seeing the Wildcats on this list again, as well.

Team/Year: Mississippi State, 2003 (#9)
Coach: Jackie Sherrill (13th season at MSU)
Previous two seasons: 3-8 (2001), 3-9 (2002)
Why?: Sherrill was the first coach to lead the Bulldogs to four consecutive winning seasons (1997-2000) since the 1940s, so despite the two losing seasons, this was still a Mississippi State squad that had recently experienced almost-unprecedented success. Sherrill had also hauled in the nation’s #17 class the previous year. The elephant in the room: after Sherrill retired following the 2003 season, the NCAA put the football team on four years of probation, took away eight scholarships, and banned them from postseason play for recruiting violations involving two assistants and boosters between 1998 and 2002. So, there’s that.
How did they fare?: The Bulldogs obviously weren’t helped by the NCAA sanctions, and this class suffered through another four losing seasons. Those who made it to a fifth year, however, did get to play for Sylvester Croom’s 8-5 2007 squad, so the class wasn’t a total loss. I wouldn’t take much away from this class because of the obvious cloud hanging over its legitimacy.

Team/Year: Arizona, 2005 (#21)
Coach: Mike Stoops (2nd year at Arizona)
Previous two seasons: 2-10 (2003), 3-8 (2004)
Why?: You’ll start to see a trend here: coaches brought in to save a moribund team bringing in a solid recruiting haul in their first full class or two. In this case, the coach is Mike Stoops, who had been an assistant under his brother, Bob, at Oklahoma from 1999-2003 (which includes one national title season) before taking over in Tucson for the 2004 season. In his first year, Stoops improved the team’s record (yes, by only one game, but standards were low) and beat in-state rival and 20th-ranked Arizona State.
How did they fare?: After another 3-8 season in 2005, the Wildcats would go 6-6, 5-7, 8-5, and 8-5 over the next four years, going from perennial Pac-10 doormat to a back-to-back bowl team. This, folks, is progress, although its tough to tell how much of this relates to Michigan.

Team/Year: Penn State, 2005 (#25)
Coach: Joe Paterno (duh)
Previous two seasons: 3-9 (2003), 4-7 (2004)
Why?: Unlike during their previous appearance on this list, by now the rumblings that JoePa was at the end of the line were very strong. However, JoePa was still a legend, Penn State was still Penn State, and the Nittany Lions could point back to 2002 as evidence that they could bounce back from consecutive losing seasons. Also, this class barely qualified: at #25, the class featured two five-stars (Justin King and Derrick Williams) but just two four-stars to go along with ten three-stars and five two-stars, so it wasn’t like JoePa managed to pull in a head-turning class here.
How did they fare?: Two of those three-stars happened to be Sean Lee and Darryl Clark, which worked out rather well for Penn State. The Nittany Lions’ five seasons following this class: 11-1, 9-4, 9-4, 11-2, 11-2. So yeah, they bounced back. Michigan fans looking for hope should point their eyes towards Happy Valley.

Team/Year: Ole Miss, 2006 (#16)
Coach: Ed Orgeron (2nd season at Ole Miss)
Previous two seasons: 4-7 (2004), 3-8 (2005)
Why?: This was Ed Orgeron’s first full class (and I mean full — it included 30 players) at Ole Miss — and Ed Orgeron wrote the book on skeezy recruiting tactics and probably committed more recruiting violations than I can count in putting this class together. He is now Lane Kiffin’s recruiting coordinator at USC. I think I’ve said enough.
How did they fare?: Although Orgeron is long gone (he’s not nearly as good a coach as he is a recruiter), this Ole Miss class, which included standouts Greg Hardy and Dexter McCluster, was instrumental in helping the Rebels to consecutive 9-4 seasons the past two years. I guess hiring a coach with extremely questionable moral standards sometimes works out, as long as you fire said coach before he drags the program down with him. Kudos? I guess?

Team/Year: Arizona, 2006 (#18)
Coach: Mike Stoops (3rd season at Arizona)
Previous two seasons: 3-8 (2004), 3-8 (2005)
Why?: We’ve covered these guys — Arizona could still ride the wave of recruiting momentum under Stoops even if that success didn’t immediately translate to the field.
How did they fare?: See above.

Team/Year: North Carolina, 2007 (#17)
Coach: Butch Davis (1st year at UNC)
Previous two seasons: 5-6 (2005), 3-9 (2007)
Why?: Davis, the former Miami (FL) head coach who compiled a 51-20 record as a Hurricane, was hired in November of 2006 after an unsuccessful stint as head coach with the Cleveland Browns. With a few months to put together a class before signing day, Davis put some impressive finishing touches on UNC’s class of 2007: 12 of their 24 commits, including five-star Marvin Austin and four-stars Greg Little, Rashad Mason, and Tydreke Powell, committed after Davis took over in Chapel Hill.
How did they fare?: Following a 4-8 campaign in 2007, UNC has put up back-to-back 8-5 seasons after the program went just 27-45 under previous coach John Bunting.

Team/Year: Illinois, 2007 (#20)
Coach: Ron Zook (3rd year at Illinois)
Previous two seasons: 2-9 (2005), 2-10 (2006)
Why?: Zook, whose skills as a recruiter greatly surpass his head coaching prowess, hauled in the #30 and #20 rated recruiting classes in his first two seasons while trying to wash the stink that was the end of the Ron Turner (one Big Ten win from 2003-2005) era off the Illinois program. Zook could still use the excuse that he was given nothing to start with while selling prospects on his first two recruiting classes, which were remarkable considering how bad a program he was given.
How did they fare?: Like I said, Zook’s skills as a recruiter greatly surpass his head coaching prowess: the Illini did manage a 9-4 record and a surprise Rose Bowl appearance in 2007, but have followed that season with marks of 5-7 and 3-9 the past two years.

The rest of the list is as follows: Colorado (2008 – #15), Minnesota (2008 – #17), Washington (2008 – #24), UCLA (2009 – #14), Stanford (2009 – #20), Texas A&M (2010 – #15), and Michigan (2010 – #20).  I won’t do the full breakdown for the rest, since at the oldest the players in these classes were sophomores in 2009 if they were even playing at all. Every single one of these schools hired a new head coach in the year or two prior to pulling in their top-25 class.

So, now that I’ve done an excessive amount of research, the question remains: what can we learn from all this? I’ve got a few things:

1. The recruiting job Rich Rodriguez did this season was very impressive. Although this is the lowest-ranked class Michigan has had in the Rivals era, Rodriguez still managed to keep the class in the top 20, and unlike most of the coaches above he couldn’t pin the full blame of his team’s losing seasons on the guy directly preceding him. Also, I don’t believe he rampantly cheated, which is a recruiting advantage at least a couple of the above coaches gave themselves.
2. Besides Mississippi State, who blatantly cheated to get their class and actually got caught, and Illinois, who is coached by Ron Zook, all of the above teams experienced marked improvement in the years following their top-25 class. Besides Penn State, none of those schools had the advantage of being a historic powerhouse like Michigan, yet there is a consistent pattern of success here.
3. The teams that did not experience success under the coach who pulled in the recruiting class have one of two common traits: in the case of Mackovic’s Arizona squad and Sherrill’s Mississippi State team, circumstances not directly related to success on the field led to their departure (for Mackovic, being a total asshole; for Sherrill, retirement under the cloud of NCAA violations). With Orgeron’s Rebels and Zook’s Illini, both schools chose to hire a coach who was known for recruiting prowess instead of in-game ability.
4. It is here that I will note that Rich Rodriguez came into Michigan as a spread specialist known for turning middling recruiting classes into a Big East powerhouse. There is still the acknowledged possibility of NCAA sanctions stemming from the practice-time scandal, which could certainly lead to Rodriguez’s departure, but I’m not going to speculate on an ongoing NCAA investigation that, frankly, I don’t think will come to that.
5. Penn State’s example is a particularly relevant and interesting one. Although obviously the school did not undergo a coaching change, they were a major football powerhouse that — twice — experienced back-to-back losing seasons only to follow up with successful years. After their second losing stretch, Penn State has had a period of prolonged success. Considering they’re the only other perennial national power on this list besides Michigan, one could easily use their example to infer that Michigan will soon be back near the top of the Big Ten.

Obviously, this is a relatively small sample of schools, and Michigan’s situation is a unique one — a national powerhouse with a relatively new coach coming off back-to-back losing seasons — that doesn’t exactly match any of the schools listed above. I think the overall trend, however, is a positive one, and my first point above stands: given the context, I believe Rich Rodriguez compiled a very impressive recruiting class. How it plays out on the field — and whether Rodriguez will be around to oversee it — is another matter entirely, but the foundation has been put in place for a return to the type of success Wolverine fans are accustomed to.

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