Taking Stock of In-State Recruiting

Well, National Signing Date 2018 came and went. For the second year in a row, the Utah Utes failed to sign any four-star prospects from the Beehive State. In the last two years, there have been 10 four-star recruits from the state of Utah, and none of them signed with Utah out of high school (though Sione Lund, a 2017 four-star recruit has transferred to Utah from Stanford). The last local four-star recruit to sign with Utah was 2016 Murray defensive end Maxs Tupai. With all this said, let’s take stock of in-state recruiting.

2018 class

Desert Hills OG Penei Sewell - Oregon Ducks

The No. 2 overall offensive guard chose the Oregon Ducks over Utah. Sewell, the No. 57 overall prospect would have been a huge literal and figurative addition to the 2018 Utah signing class, but instead, Utah will have to face him every time they play the Ducks.

East OT Junior Angilau - Texas Longhorns

A top 10 offensive tackle and the No. 125 overall player had a change of plans ahead of the early signing period. He reportedly was not planning to sign until February, but his plans changed, and he decided on Texas. Utah supposedly had a shot with him before his plans changed, but it was not to be.

Olympus DE Cameron Latu - Alabama Crimson Tide

Of the three top 150 recruits from Utah this year, Latu is likely the one Utah had the best shot with. They recruited him hard and stayed on him until he signed with Alabama in December. Latu is the No. 7 weakside defensive end and No. 131 player overall in the 2018 class.

East OG/DT Sam Taimani - Washington Huskies

Taimani was one who seemed destined to head out of state. The Huskies will reportedly play him at defensive tackle rather than offensive guard.

Lehi QB Cammon Cooper - Washington State Cougars

Of the five four-star recruits headed out of state, this one hurts the least. Utah really did not recruit Cooper after securing a commitment from Jack Tuttle. I have said this before, I think Tuttle is a better fit for Utah and Cooper is a better fit for WSU.

To look at comparable in-state recruiting, let’s look at each state that only has one Power Five team. Since 2012 was Utah’s first full year recruiting in the Pac-12 (the 2011 class was signed in Feb. of 2011 prior to Utah joining the Pac-12), we decided to use 2012 as our starting date for this analysis and looked through the 2018 class that was just signed. For this, we considered the following states:

*Note: Louisiana and Ohio were excluded from this analysis because they are two of the most talent-rich states and LSU and Ohio State are blue-blood programs.

The percentage reflects the percentage of 247Sports Composite four- or five-star recruits who stayed in-state to play college football.

Note: Rutgers did not join a Power Five conference until 2014 but was in a BCS Conference prior to 2014 (also for 2018, quarterback Artur Sitkowski was included for staying home since he is a N.J. native who played at the prep school IMG Academy in Fla.).

Utah is the only state where prospects stayed home at a non-Power Five Conference School (BYU). If we consider just the in-state prospects that stayed at Utah, the total that stayed home was two out of 22, only 9.09%, the lowest of any of the states examined in this exercise. Two players who signed out-of-state did end up transferring to Utah (Cooper Bateman from the 2013 class and Lund). If we include these two (though Bateman never saw any game action in his one year at Utah), it takes it up to four out of 22 four- or five-star Utah high school players who played for Utah for at least part of their college career, which comes out to 18.18% (though I do not know the transfer numbers for the other schools in this analysis because I do not follow them).

We looked at Utah and Colorado in the above analysis, now let’s look at Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, the other three states in the Pac-12 footprint that produce a similar amount of talent to Utah and exclude California because the amount of blue-chip talent is on another level (also, there are four Power Five programs in California compared to two for the other three states mentioned).

Now to do some more analysis, here are a few more tables showing the amount of blue chip recruits produced in the states with one Power Five School followed by the number of blue chip recruits produced in the five Pac-12 states considered in this analysis with the percentage that stayed home.

As you can see, the state of Utah produces a decent amount of talent. Now, the reason to examine this is to find states that are comparable to Utah to use in terms of analysis. Since New Jersey and Maryland produced more than double the amount of blue chip prospects than Utah in the same period, they would not be appropriate states to use as a comparison. Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, West Virginia, and Wisconsin would not be appropriate states to use for comparison either because all of those states produced fewer than 10 blue chip prospects over the timeframe. This leaves Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, New York, Oregon, and Washington to use as comparisons. If you total up the percentage of blue chip recruits that stayed home in those states it was just over 32%. Arkansas had the highest retention rate at over 63%, Washington retained the most in the Pac-12 with over 57%, while Colorado was the lowest with just over 11%. Since the state of Utah has two schools that have landed blue chip recruits, it might be slightly more appropriate to compare Utah to Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. Utah and BYU retained just under 23% while the Arizona schools kept 29% home, the Oregon schools kept almost 39% home, and the Washington schools kept 57% home. Utah at 9.09% did keep more blue chip recruits home than Oregon State (5.56%) and Washington State (7.14%). OSU and WSU are definitely the second-tier school in their state, while Utah is the dominant school in the state of Utah, being in a Power Five conference and owning a seven-game winning streak over BYU.

Do I think Utah needs to do a better job keeping in-state prospects home? Yes I absolutely do, but do I think Kyle Whittingham should be blamed for so many leaving the state? No. One thing that has not been mentioned yet but is worth considering is that just because a player is a four-star recruit from Utah does not mean the Utah coaches are going to recruit him. That played may not be a fit for the program. I know of several former blue chip in-state recruits who Utah did not recruit because they did not fit in with the culture of the program. Fans may be upset so-and-so left, but it might have partially been because Utah did not feel they were the right player to bring into the program.

Another thing going against Utah recruiting in-state is the culture that if you are a highly rated recruit it is “cooler” to leave the state than stay home. Some players are just destined to leave their home state to play college football elsewhere, it happens to almost every team, not just Utah. Why is it more of a problem for Utah than most other schools? It could stem from the fact that Utah only recently joined the Power Five, while every other school analyzed in this was in a BCS Conference since the BCS started in 1998. Utah had to bust their way in, so in-state recruits might still remember Utah being on the outside looking in while teams like USC were playing for and winning national championships or playing in BCS bowls like Oregon and Stanford were. All of the other Power Five programs mentioned in this article have an advantage stemming from the fact that they have been major conference teams for at least two decades, while Utah only has been for about half a decade.

With time, Utah can and will shift the culture in-state. Additionally, if Utah can continue to pull in players like Jaylon Johnson, a top 100 recruit in 2017, Solomon Enis, and Tuttle from out-of-state, it places less need on keeping local players home. Utah really started to focus on recruiting high-profile out-of-state recruits last year, and they have gotten a few of them. If Utah can continue winning, recruiting will improve. Just look at Utah’s last two classes for evidence of that, four-straight winning seasons have produced the two highest-rated classes in school history. Further, Utah’s official visitors this past season was amazing. Multiple top 100 recruits were on campus for official visits. While Utah did not land any of them, it is a sign that things are trending in the right direction. Five years ago Utah never would have gotten a player like Talanoa Hufanga or Devon Williams to even visit. In five years, Utah will probably be able to land more players of that caliber consistently both from Utah and from outside the state.