A Tale of Two Cities: Iowa City, IA & Urbana, IL

On paper, it looks like Kirk has things figured out

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. The Iowa Hawkeyes are off to their best start in school history. The Illinois Fighting Illini are fighting to avoid their third 2-loss season in the last five years. Just two years ago in 2007, if you asked which of these two programs was likely to be the 9-0 leader of the Big Ten and ranked 4th in the BCS, the answer would clearly have been the Illini. Despite a disappointing showing at the Rose Bowl, Zook and the Illini finished the season with 9 wins. Illinois was stocking the pantry with top recruits, and all the rest of the Big Ten could do was sit and watch.

On the other side of the Mississippi, Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes were suffering from an apparent implosion. Despite winning a share of the Big Ten Title in 2004-2005, Drew Tate and the Hawkeyes managed to go 13-12 over the next two seasons. The advent of the Zooker in C-U spelled further disaster as the Hawkeye recruiting classes sputtered after the shine of Holloway’s miraculous “catch” wore off.

Yet today, the Hawkeyes are off to their best start in school history, and the Illini are fighting to prevent a repeat of Ron Turner’s final years with the program. So based on the past five years, what has happened?

Since taking over the Illini, there is no question that Zook has given a boost to recruiting. In his five years he has amassed 120 players worth a combined 338 “stars” from Rivals.com. In that same amount of time, Ferentz has put together 110 players worth 305 “stars.” Therefore, the average freshman signing with the Illini beats out the average Hawkeye 2.82 “stars” to 2.77 “stars.” On paper, the recruiting prowess of these two programs doesn’t seem that much different. Based on this, you might question the accuracy of Zook’s reputation as a recruiter. However, when you consider that Zook’s staff has out-recruited Ferentz’s staff 23-17 for 4 and 5 “star” recruits, you definitely have to give the man style points.

Nontheless, this doesn’t seem to be translating to the field. If we graph out the performance of the two teams by putting total Rivals.com “stars” since 2004 on the Y-axis and total wins since 2005 on the X-Axis, the picture becomes pretty clear.

On paper, it looks like the Illini have lost the forest for the trees.

The Illini enjoy a roughly 110 index v. the Hawkeyes in recruiting. Still, for all that recruiting, the Hawkeyes enjoy a 185 index v. the Illini in total wins.

There has been a lot of speculation as to why this could be. Perhaps Rivals.com’s ranking system is a poor correlate to on-field performance. Perhaps Zook’s players have been overrated. Perhaps the Hawkeyes know something that the rest of us don’t. Perhaps Ferentz develops talent more successfully. Perhaps the Illini have some major “cancers” in the locker room. Whatever the case may be, on paper, it looks like the Hawks have turned the tables on 2007.