Bud Elliott Gives Florida Gators Top-10 Blue-Chip Ratio For 2020 Season
As a point of reference to the most-likely collegiate programs to reach the promised land of a National Championship victory, 247Sports' Bud Elliott released the 2020 version of his Blue-Chip Ratio, which has the Gators climbing from their previous season.
BCR is calculated by determining the percentage of scholarship players in a given recruiting class who are rated as four or five-star players ahead of two or three-star players. This is then calculated over the previous four recruiting classes, giving a percentage.
Historically, this percentage has been fairly accurate in predicting whether a team has a chance to win the National Championship, however, Elliott cautions the use of this metric to predict games.
For this season, the Gators received a BCR of 63%, up from 53% in 2019. This landed Florida tied for No. 8 on the chart with Clemson, LSU and Oklahoma. At the very top of Elliott's chart is Alabama at 83%, followed by Georgia and Ohio State at 82% and 80%, respectively.
The Gators' rise in rankings is likely due to the team's 16 four-star players recruited in 2020, along with one five-star player (defensive tackle Gervon Dexter). Conversely, the Gators have signed only six players with three stars or less heading into this season.
Highly thought of entering the year, Florida looks to take command of the SEC East heading into year three of the Dan Mullen era. Over the past two seasons, the Gators have won at least 10 games, including 11 in 2019 and a New Years Six Bowl appearance.
Although the Gators are not ranked at the top, there has been precedent for teams rated in the 60s percentage-wise to win the title. For example, LSU won last year with a 64% BCR, and Clemson won in 2018 at 61%. While the team will need to overcome odds to win a national title, that hasn't prevented some on the team to remain confident in their chances.
The Gators have come a long way since Mullen took over, steadily climbing in BCR over the previous two seasons. In 2018 the Gators weren't ranked, landing a 42%. The ratio was low, mostly due to the 24% the team earned in 2015, the first year of the Jim McElwain era.
Remaining steady as one of the top SEC schools in the country, the Gators will look to live up to their ranking as the fourth-best BCR in the conference, just behind Alabama, LSU and Georgia.
Florida's recruiting continues to improve, ranking second in the SEC thus far in the 2021 cycle while holding the eighth-best national ranking. The Gators are currently slated to land 11 four-star players, although linebacker Diwun Black will not be included in the formula due to the lack of junior college rankings by various recruiting networks.
While it may not seem like much, the Gators have steadily been one of the better-recruiting teams in the nation over the past few seasons. Will it pay off?
