How AI and analytics are changing recruiting at West Virginia
College football recruiting has always involved projection.
Projecting talent. Projecting development. Projecting whether a player can fit a scheme, handle a locker room and eventually help win football games.
But at West Virginia, under head coach Rich Rodriguez and general manager Chuck Lillie, technology is becoming a larger part of that process.
Lillie recently detailed how analytics, tracking technology and AI-assisted measurements are helping shape the Mountaineers’ recruiting efforts during an appearance on the 3 Guys Before The Game podcast.
Moving beyond the eye test
While traditional film evaluation still matters, West Virginia is looking for ways to remove some of the guesswork.
“The biggest place where analytics is getting involved is trying to really quantify things that beforehand were subjective measurements,” Lillie said.
That includes areas such as speed, change of direction and movement traits that coaches once relied almost entirely on the eye test to evaluate.
“If I’m watching a player on film and I think that player has got really good speed, that’s my eye, that’s my memory bank telling me this guy is somewhere in the 75th or 80th percentile,” Lillie said. “But now you’re taking that subjective measurement and you’re able to objectively define certain measurements like change of direction and linear speed.”
That data now plays a significant role in the evaluation process.
Tracking speed and athletic traits
West Virginia players wear tracking devices daily during workouts and practices, allowing the staff to build measurable athletic benchmarks across the roster.
From there, the Mountaineers can compare recruits directly against current players already in the program.
“We’re able to take video components and figure out this recruit is playing anywhere from 19-and-a-half to 21 miles an hour when he’s opening up,” Lillie said. “Now we can correlate that at this position.”
In some cases, the numbers can dramatically stand out.
“We don’t have a guy on the team that runs this type of speed,” Lillie said. “This guy would be the fastest player in the room today if we sign him.”
The growing use of technology also extends beyond straight-line speed.
Lillie explained that programs are increasingly measuring force generation, movement efficiency and other athletic traits depending on position groups.
“There are things that you can measure either with an offensive or defensive lineman that are kind of force-based in nature,” he said. “It can tell you how much power that player is generating, given their size and weight.”
Data is only part of the process
Still, West Virginia is not simply allowing numbers to make decisions on their own.
Lillie emphasized that analytics are another layer within the process rather than a replacement for coaches and evaluators.
“You still want subjective opinions,” he said. “I want to know what the head coach’s opinion is. I want to know what the position coach’s opinion is of the player.”
Instead, the goal is to create a more complete evaluation process.
“It’s another objective data point that we are able to add into the equation to try to make a more well-rounded decision,” Lillie said.
Narrowing the recruiting focus
The data can also help streamline recruiting in a landscape where staffs are sorting through thousands of prospects across high school recruiting and the transfer portal.
“There’ll be certain things that we look at based on the position a player plays,” Lillie said. “If they’re outside of this box, it doesn’t mean they can’t be successful for somebody else, but it’s not what we’re looking for.”
That allows staffs to narrow the focus more efficiently while also identifying players who fit exactly what the program wants physically.
And as recruiting continues evolving, Lillie believes those tools will only become more important moving forward.
“The more that we advance with that kind of stuff, I think there’s going to be indicators of success or indicators of failure,” he said.
The future of recruiting
For West Virginia, the future of recruiting still starts with relationships, evaluation and development.
But increasingly, it also includes data.
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