Hockey hello: Rutger McGroarty

Well, at least until 2019.

Basketball is generally the easiest sport to transition into college and make an immediate impact.  Those top kids are already playing on high-school all-star teams against the best competition in the country.   When they get to college, the step up in competition is still big, but not insane. I'm pretty sure the top AAU team in the country could win some college basketball games.  

Football is much much different.  A low level Big Ten team would pancake pretty much any high school team out there just due to the physical changes that kids go through between 17 and 21.

I would guess hockey is somewhere in the middle.  Not as hard to come in right away as football, but not as easy as basketball.

Well one reason is because you don't have football players turn pro (at least not technically) after their freshman years.  Alabama and OSU are mostly guaranteed to get 3 years from their 5 star guys.  Not true in hockey.

It's more because very few basketball or football players start college when they're 20. In hockey, that's pretty common with some schools, especially those who aren't successful at getting college-ready 18 year olds to commit.

So these players who start college are 20 are now are 23-24 year old juniors and seniors, and are thus grown-ass men playing against teenagers. Even if the teenagers are more skilled, they're at a very large disadvantage from a physcial development perspective.

1) In hockey, it's possible to play juniors until you're 20, there's no equivalent league in football or basketball. So, players come in whenever they finish high school, normally. 2) There are similar, though less popular paths in football/basketball - junior college, mission years (BYU) or just being an old HS graduate.

Hunter Dickinson graduated at 19 and turned 20 at the beginning of his freshman season, so he's basically an overager. Also - we saw last year how valuable Mike Smith (23 at the beginning of the season) was as an older, more experienced player. And there's been chatter about how old Brad Hawkins is on the football team this year. So it's possible, just less common.

This does happen from time to time in football.  D'Antonio's best teams (2013, 14, 15) were filled with fourth, fifth and a sprinkling of sixth year players.  When teams tend to greatly outperform their recruiting rankings, it is usually because of a stable coaching staff and a lot of older, experienced players.  Northwestern is another good example, they win or contend for the west when they are old and experienced then fall below .500 the next year when everyone leaves and they have to start a bunch of first year starters, rinse and repeat.  Wisconsin is also like this to some extent, although they do get their share of top 250 players.  IMHO (and no, I'm not the first to say this) one of M's biggest problems is recruiting close to top level, but not retaining a lot of guys to play in years 4/5, essentially being stuck in the middle - not retaining like a Wisconsin, but not recruiting to the level of the top 5.