By Anthony Gimino
SportsLine Staff Writer

You know the mantra: Recruiting is an inexact science.

The ratings are skewed toward high-profile schools. The recruiting services go on reputation alone. Only two of the past 16 Heisman Trophy winners were Parade All-Americans.

Whatever.

Northwestern and Washington State each reached the Rose Bowl in the past four years without the benefit of a Top 25 class.

But you don't have to be Bobby Bowden to know there's a correlation between a highly rated recruiting class and on-field success.

Do the math.

No. 1 in recruiting rankings. No. 1 in winning percentage. No. 1 in the polls.

Florida State is the king of college football this decade, and (surprise, surprise!) it all starts with the recruiting.

A glance at the final AP polls from the 1990s and national recruiting ratings of the decade shows Florida State's recruiting classes indeed have not been overrated.

Compare all the schools in the country, and we find the Seminoles' success on the field has been virtually predictable by its success in recruiting.

Give 25 points to the top-rated team in the AP Top 25 and the (for sake of consistency) SuperPrep Top 25 recruiting ratings, all the way down to one point for No. 25 in each poll.

The result is that for the decade, Bowden's Florida State teams are atop both polls with 206 points in the AP Top 25 in the '90s, and 207 points in the SuperPrep rankings in the during the same time.

Sounds like a pretty exact science.

Kansas State's Bill Snyder has taken so-so recruiting classes and created one of the decade's top programs. (Allsport)

The Seminoles have been the best recruiters of the decade and the team of the 1990s, winning 87.8 percent of their games (97-13-1) and bringing in nine players who would become consensus All-Americans.

Of course, there's always "coaching 'em up," injuries, late-blooming walk-ons, players transferring in and out, academic catastrophes, and the like ... but still, the perception of who is recruiting well has largely translated into who are the best teams.

Florida, Michigan, Penn State, Tennessee, Colorado and Miami -- as well as Florida State, of course -- all rate among the top 10 in recruiting and in the postseason polls.

That means 70 percent of the top 10 recruiting programs are coming through on the field as well.

Doing most with the least

KANSAS STATE: The Cinderella of the decade are the Wildcats, which used good coaching, cream-puff scheduling, crafty recruiting and a hefty dose of junior college transfers to become a consistent winner ... and then a national title contender last season.

The Wildcats have had only one Top 25 recruiting class in the '90s, finishing No. 23 in 1997. Their JC transfers are often overlooked or underappreciated. Looking back two years ago, a class including QB Michael Bishop and LB Jeff Kelly, among others, deserved a better mark than 23rd.

K-State ranks 44th this decade in recruiting. By the polls, K-State is 14th.

Oddly, Nebraska -- not exactly thought of as an underdog -- makes the second-biggest jump.

The Cornhuskers are 14th in recruiting with 98 points and third in the polls with 149 points, an improvement of 51 points. This speaks well of Nebraska recruiting to its needs and to its system (as well as having a fleet of strength and conditioning coaches).

Washington is next with an increase of 46 points, but those numbers are misleading. The Huskies aren't overachievers, they went to three consecutive Rose Bowls from 1990-92, led by 1980s recruits.

Arizona is more of an overachiever, in fact. The Wildcats have only one Top 25 recruiting class this decade (No. 23 last year), but are overall No. 20 in the AP Poll for the decade, with three Top 25 finishes, including two in the top 10.

Doing least with the most

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: No team has underachieved more this decade than Southern California, which is ranked seventh in SuperPrep's recruiting rankings. The Trojans have been ranked in eight of the nine Top 25s in the decade, totaling 131 points.

Granted, this is at least partially an indication SuperPrep has rated the Trojans too high, too often (even more so than other recruiting services), but USC's performance on the field very rarely has lived up to the hype.

Surprise: The Trojans are not even one of the nation's best 25 teams this decade, checking in at 28th.

Some might explain USC's 98-point drop in the rankings to SuperPrep itself, inasmuch as publisher Allen Wallace is a USC grad and is said to still bleed cardinal and gold. (It's a claim he scoffs at.)

Still, the Trojans have brought in only one dominant offensive lineman this decade -- Tony Boselli.

What's more, USC has not had an all-league running back in the '90s, failing to hit the mark on, among others, Deon Strother, Dwight McFadden, David Dotson, Terry Barnum, Saladin McCullough (although he became an all-league player at Oregon after going to junior college), LaVale Woods, Rodney Sermons, Delon Washington and (so far) Malaefou MacKenzie.

The second-biggest loser is Notre Dame. The Irish are ranked third in recruiting (182 points), but dip to No. 11 in the polls (105 points).

WHAT GOOD IS A highly-rated player if he doesn't fit? Everyone wanted Ron Powlus -- and the Irish scored high when signing him -- but he proved to be the wrong quarterback for Lou Holtz's system.

And by the end of Holtz's tenure, Notre Dame had missed on its fast recruits, leaving new coach Bob Davie with a pedestrian team only now beginning to -- literally -- get back up to speed.

Following the Irish is Texas, which recruits at No. 13, but plays at No. 22 (a loss of 64 points).

The situation is even worse at South Carolina, which has no Top 25 finishes to show for its five Top 25 recruiting classes. And shame on Baylor. Four Top 25 recruiting classes ... and the Bears are still looking for their first end-of-season ranking.

Don't think we forget about you, Illinois.

The Illini's ledger: Five ranked recruiting classes, one ranked team. Barely. The 1990 squad finished No. 25.

Anthony Gimino is a writer on SportsLine's staff.