Blue-Chip Ratio numbers show Venables has Sooners on right track
Bud Elliott’s Blue-Chip Ratio rests on the fundamental premise that teams with more talented players tend to win more than teams with fewer high-end players. It crystallizes the disparities in roster talent by measuring the number of four- and five-star high school recruits a team has signed out of high school relative to the number of lower-ranked players it has landed in the previous four years. As Elliott points out, the national championship winner will almost certainly come from a team with a BCR of 50% or better.
Essentially, then, the BCR is a counting exercise with a cool name that works as a crude expression of an intuitive idea. But it is very useful if you’re looking for a general ballpark of a team’s talent level relative to the rest of the country. It can also help you weed out sure-fire pretenders from the contenders for the national championship. Oh, and it makes for nice off-season fodder for people who write about college football.
The good news for the Oklahoma Sooners: At 73%, their BCR has never been higher since Elliott started compiling it in 2013.
OU passed the 50% threshold in 2018 and has continued to ascend ever since then. This year, its BCR ticked up from 70% a year ago. The Sooners now rank sixth overall in BCR, slightly behind Oregon (76%) and slightly ahead of Texas (72%).
Naturally, the disruption in the program with the departure of Lincoln Riley at the end of the 2021 season impacted the composition of OU’s roster. The transfer-adjusted BCR for the Sooners sits at 63%, or eighth nationally. Elliott noted that the fact OU added 30 transfers in the last two seasons depressed its adjusted number. This is just a reality in college football following coaching changes in the era of relaxed restrictions on player movement.
(Keep in mind that the free year of eligibility for players in college in 2020 is still impacting rosters.)
This year’s BCR metric fits with the larger theme of the offseason for OU: realizing the effects of the long-term plan set in motion with Brent Venables’ hire prior to the 2022 season.
The Sooners’ BCR now contains three recruiting classes signed by Venables and his staff, including the ‘22 group that was put together after just a few weeks of them being on the job. The breakdown of blue-chip additions by year:
2021 - 14/16
2022 - 18/22
2023 - 17/26
2024 - 20/28
The 2021 class represents a prime example of the challenges Venables and Co. have faced since arriving in Norman. It consisted of a small number of high schoolers and JUCO players, 16, a high percentage of whom were well regarded. Unfortunately for the Sooners, 10 blue-chip players in the class eventually transferred out.
As a result, the members of the OU coaching staff have scrambled to find transfers of their own fill in the gaps left by attrition and Riley’s transfer-heavy recruiting strategy. The good news is they’ve managed to stockpile highly touted prep recruits as well, landing 55 blue-chippers out of a total of 76 players in three classes.
Offsetting the personnel issues caused by the coaching change has kept OU from assembling a roster that measures up to the absolute best in college football. However, as the 2024 BCR suggests, Venables has made up major ground in a short amount of time through dogged recruiting. Stay on this track, and more wins should come.