Close to home: UW football’s in-state recruiting efforts don’t affect Cowboys’ win-loss record, but new coach Bohl promises change

When Craig Bohl was introduced as Wyoming’s new head football coach in December, he emphasized how he recruited high school players from the state of North Dakota while coaching at North Dakota State.

With the Cowboys, Bohl said he would recruit each of Wyoming’s 64 football-playing high schools, looking for players who fit his system. In fact, Bohl said he would “scour” Wyoming to find players to don the brown and gold.

The promise instantly endeared him to Wyoming fans, who for years have griped about UW’s inability to both find and develop in-state football talent. How well Bohl follows through on that promise will be determined in part by how many Wyoming players join the Cowboys by signing a National Letter of Intent on signing day on Wednesday.

In the past 10 years, Wyoming fans have had plenty of reasons to be disillusioned by the lack of homegrown talent suiting up for the brown and gold. In fact, only once in the past 10 years has the Wyoming football team had an above-average number of letterwinners actually hail from the Equality State, an examination of 2,626 UW letterwinnners by home state since 1964 by wyoming-football.com shows.

In fact, former UW head coach Dave Christensen had only three letterwinners from Wyoming on his squad in 2011 and 2012, and only two letterwinners from Wyoming in his final year 2013 – matching the fewest number of native letterwinners to suit up for UW since 1973.

Oddly enough, an examination of the hometowns of UW’s letterwinners over the past 50 years reveals an interesting trend: The Cowboys’ recruitment of homegrown talent has basically no effect on the team’s win-loss record.

Wyoming fans will trade success on the field for fewer homegrown players – the 1967 Sugar Bowl team, one of the most beloved in UW history, only had one letterwinner from the state of Wyoming. But Cowboy fans within Wyoming’s borders have been frustrated recently by the combination of two factors: The lack of Wyoming players coupled with the lack of consistent success on the field.

That made Bohl’s promise that much more powerful. To a proud but frustrated fan base, Bohl’s success, or failure, at recruiting Wyoming’s best high school football talent may end up being just as important as his ability to win games.

The facts

In the past 50 years of Wyoming Cowboy football, about 12.5 percent of the Cowboys’ letterwinners have been homegrown. But in the past 10 years, only once (in 2010) has UW topped that 12.5-percent mark, having more than an average number of letterwinners come from the state of Wyoming.

In 2013, only two players from Wyoming (Gillette’s Spencer Bruce and Laramie’s Josh Teeter) earned letters for the Cowboys.

Wyoming hasn’t paired the two elements Wyoming fans love most — a winning record and an above-average number of letterwinners coming from Wyoming high schools — in more than a decade. Actually, Wyoming hasn’t had the best of both worlds since 1999; that season, UW finished 7-4 and had 13.1 percent (eight of 61) of its letterwinners come from Wyoming.

That double-dip has happened often enough for Wyoming fans to know it’s possible.

In the past 50 years, Wyoming has notched a winning season with an above-average number of homegrown players 12 times. But UW has actually had more winning seasons come from seasons when the number of homegrown letterwinners was below average:

Here’s a season-by-season breakdown of the number of letterwinners, the number of letterwinners from Wyoming, Wyoming’s winning percentage and the correlation therein, with cells in green signifying above-average seasons:

In years where UW had a higher number than average of its letterwinners come from Wyoming, the Cowboys finished a combined 140-158-3; in years where UW had a lower number of Wyoming letterwinners than average, the Cowboys went a combined 145-130-1.

UW has had its best success both with and without homegrown recruits. Wyoming had just two homegrown letterwinners in 1966 and only one — the lowest total in 50 years — in 1967; those two years, the Cowboys had back-to-back 10-1 seasons. However, in back-to-back double-digit victory seasons in 1987 (10-3) and 1988 (11-2), Wyoming had nine homegrown letter winners each season, and in the 10-2 1996 season, UW had seven homegrown letterwinners, above the average for the past 50 years.

However, in Wyoming’s only double-digit loss seasons the past 50 years (2000 and 2002), the Cowboys had a higher-than-average number of homegrown letterwinners. And, of course, in the past two seasons under Christensen (4-8 and 5-7), the Cowboys have had a dearth of in-state talent.

It’s not like UW is missing out on in-state recruits. In fact, a recent analysis of the hometowns of college football players by Benn Stancil of Mode Analytics showed a fact even Christensen’s biggest detractors can’t ignore — every single FBS football player from the state of Wyoming in 2013 played for the Wyoming Cowboys.

The new course

Even so, Bohl’s promise struck a chord with in-state fans. In examining the numbers, we can see why.

In the past 50 years, Wyoming has had a below-average number of homegrown recruits AND finished with a losing record only 10 times. But five of those 10 seasons have come since 2005.

Wyoming fans stomach losing easier when it’s homegrown players on the roster. But when it’s not? Wyoming fans react like you’d expect fans of the state’s only four-year institution to react: with frustration.

If Bohl follows through on his promise to recruit Wyoming high schools harder than his predecessors, then some of that frustration might fade.

History shows us, though, that UW’s success is much less dependent on where its players come from than what UW’s coaches do with the players once they get to Laramie.

A special thanks to Diane Dodson of the UW Sports Information office for providing the information on hometowns of Cowboy letterwinners. This work would not have been possible without her help.

Post updated Nov. 19, 2014, to fix HTML5 compatibility issues.

–patrick