UCLA Football’s Blue Chip Ratio Should Lead to Success

Tom Bradley coaching Tak McKinley and several other defensive players. – Joe Piechowski

Let’s talk about the Blue Chip Ratio.

SB Nation Recruiting Analyst Bud Elliott has an article today about the 2016 Blue Chip Ratios of every team in a Power 5 conference.

The Blue Chip Ratio calculates the percentage of each team’s 4 and 5 star recruits.

UCLA comes in 9th overall with a 0.55 Blue Chip Ratio. In other words, 55% of UCLA’s recruits on this year’s team were either 4-star or 5-star recruits.

Elliott goes on to mention that the Blue Chip Ratio is one of the best predictors of whether a team will win the National Championship. Elliot takes it a step further, writing: “As my colleague Bill Connelly has said, winning in college football takes talent acquisition, development and deployment.” Elliott also explains that, because NCAA rules restrict coaches to 20 hours per week with their players, development is limited.

That leaves talent acquisition (and retention) and deployment as the biggest factors in winning.

So, if, under Jim Mora, UCLA has performed well in talent acquisition, then the biggest question left is a matter of deployment. In other words, are players playing in the best positions with effective schemes?

While Southern Cal does have a higher Blue Chip Ratio, UCLA’s talent level should be enough to deliver a Pac-12 Championship…unless the deployment is not the best.

Many Bruin fans felt that Noel Mazzone’s offensive scheme was holding the team back. If Coach Polamalu’s system works as well as we hope, the sky may be the limit for the Bruins.

In fact, Bud Elliott’s article lists UCLA as one of the thirteen teams to reach the 50% Blue Chip Ratio this year and he predicts that this year’s national champions will almost certainly come from that group of thirteen teams. Considering the Bruins play one of those teams in game #1, we’re likely to know more about this year’s team on September 3rd.

And, that’s a darn good reason to follow what going on in Training Camp.

It’s Day 9 of Training Camp in San Bernardino. The team gets back on the field at 3pm today. The weather for this afternoon should be sunny with a high of 103 degrees. So, it’s going to be HOT out there!

It’s good preparation for the Texas heat the team will face in just a few weeks when they head to College Station.

This is our open thread for today’s practice. You can tweet pictures to us @Bruinnation, write a fanpost with words and/or photos/video, or share them in a thread or Spaulding Report. This is our community and the more we each share the better.

Go Bruins!!!