During the Meyer era I did a look back at a 5-year block to see how classes actually produced. By produce I meant starter or regular backup (say in the DL rotation). It was a small sample, but the percentages were pretty low. 50% of 5-star guys, 40% of 4-stars and 28% of 3-stars made it to at least that level.
That doesn’t get into how long they played a significant role, but it seems to support your point.
Just a guess, but 22/year might not be enough to maintain a roster of 85. You’ve allowed for 5 per year. Maybe that’s about right but it seems low to me. 2-3 juniors to the NFL, a medical or two, a couple who get their degrees and don’t play, a couple of pot heads... But we also seem to get a couple of transfers in every year so that offsets it, too. (Just thinking out loud.)
Yeah my numbers are based on a mature program that is trying to redshirt all recruits. That is just not the way of the world these days. (One of the more honorable things Galen Hall did at UF was redshirt almost all Frosh to help them and UF later rather than try to squeeze out an extra win to help him keep his job.) It would be interesting to see what percentage frosh are redshirted at currently successful stable programs.
Of course even if you are only redshirting 50% of Frosh, you pick up another group of other redshirts due to injuries at some point in a player's career. Heck look at Trask, he certainly would have been put on the field at some point as a true frosh when UF was running out of QBs had it been known that he would be injured all of his RFR year.
I think signing 22 a year implies attrition of 10 players a year, assuming everyone red shirts. (10 players a year is 2 players per class per year on average. Since on average your program at all times has 2.5 years experience, 10*2.5 = 25 and 22*5 = 110 and 110 - 25 = 85.) If you look at mature winning programs that seems about right to me. A handful of players leave early for the NFL, a handful transfer, you get a medical DQ or two, a player or two who decides the game is not for him any more and a signee or so do not enroll for various reasons.
Of course many if not most programs are below 85 many if not most years, your sense that 22 a year is not enough seems right. Of course UF has had two recent coaching changes which amps up transfers so that may cause us to think there is more attrition than there is with a mature winning program.
