Our latest experiment involves tracking the starting ratings of 3 star junior college recruits and their 3 star true freshman counterparts.
In some earlier NCAA Football games, JUCO players came in rated a little higher due to the fact that they were a little further into their development and had less time at your school to develop.
This was a very basic test. All we did was recruit a total of 50 3 star freshman (over 2 seasons) and 50 3 star junior college transfers and observe the overall rating that they came in with.
We limited this test to 3 star recruits simply because junior college transfers can’t come in as 4 or 5 star recruits.
The short answer is no, junior college recruits do not come in with any higher rating than their true freshman counterparts.
For both sets of 3 star recruits, the average overall rating was somewhere between 65 and 66 overall.
The range of overall ratings outcomes was also the same with 99% of players coming in somewhere between 60-69 overall. Only 1 player out of 100 didn’t fit in that range. That recruit came in with a 58 overall rating.
Most 3 star players, regardless of whether they were true freshman or JUCO transfers came in somewhere between 63-67 overall.
Implications Of This Experiment
The takeaway here is that you really should never recruit junior college players unless you are incredibly desperate. You miss out on 1-2 years of player development and they aren’t any easier to recruit than their true freshman counterparts.
As far as I can tell, there is no benefit whatsoever to recruiting JUCOs and you are much better off completely ignoring them altogether.
Next up: Try our Recruiting Insight Engine 2.0
