Who are the biggest boys in the Big 12, how does each class measure up, and how does every coach recruit...

Build your own graphic: 1 tap a chart point to pin its card 2 drag to place · corner grip to resize 3 tap a highlighted name for the full player card 4 download from the chart — pinned cards included

The newest cycle stays open through signing day — counts and average ratings move as commits land and 247 re-ranks.
The newest class in your selected window vs the three classes before it.

Generated from the current settings — change team, sport, or years in the top bar and these update.

Pick your team

Clicking a logo sets your team everywhere and opens the Size Lab.

The Body Map: every player, height x weight (tap the dots!)

Pick a position above to compare just that group — cloud, medians and all.

Position DNA vs the Conference

Insights

Conference Beef: who has the biggest bodies?

'Current roster' = who's on campus now, at CURRENT weights — players add 10–25 lbs after arriving, so the roster runs heavier than the same players' commit weights. The year window applies to commit classes only.

Big 12 Beef Board

'Big 12' means today's 16 members, applied retroactively — Arizona, ASU, Colorado, and Utah joined in 2024, so their earlier classes were signed in the Pac-12.

Size Over Time vs the Conference

Portal transfers exist in the data from 2021 on — with 'Commits + transfers' selected, earlier years show HS classes only.

Head to Head: Position-Group Weigh-In

Class Retention: who keeps their signees?

The portal-era scoreboard: of the last four signing classes, how many players are still in the building?

The Measurement Reality Check (the 'listed height' problem)

Coach Eras: how each staff recruits differently

Always shows the full 2016–2026 history. Tap or hover a class dot for its top-5 signees; click to open the class on 247Sports.

The Coach Timeline

Classes belong to the staff that ran their December signing window, so after a January change (Fisch → Brennan, Jan 2024) the outgoing staff's final class largely signed before the new coach arrived. The newest cycle is still open — ratings re-rank and players keep committing through signing day.

What Each Coach Spends Their Classes On

Era Report Card

The Defensive War Room — built for the 3-3-5

Arizona's defense under DC Danny Gonzales runs the attacking 3-3-5 odd stack — a scheme that trades size for surprise: one true big body at Nose, long rangy Ends, multi-role Stack LBs, and a hybrid S/LB patrolling the middle. This room maps the selected team's bodies onto those roles, finds the thin rooms, and writes the brief — all from the control-bar settings.

Note: the role bands here are specialized for Arizona's 3-3-5 (Rocky Long / Gonzales tree) — they're a lens, not a universal depth chart. Other teams' bodies are shown through the same lens for comparison.

Run a different scheme? We'll build a war room tuned to YOUR team — get in touch

The 3-3-5 Fit Board: Bodies by Odd-Stack Role

Hover a segment for names + weights; the annotation shows headcount vs the scheme's two-deep target and how much of the room is JR/SR.

Defensive Bodies vs the League (3-3-5 Lens)

Roster Construction: Who Graduates Next?

High JR/SR share = rooms the next one or two classes must restock.

Home-State Talent: Keep the Fence Up

The Brief

Auto-written from the recruiting + roster data, defense first. Ratings are commit-time inputs; pairing them with outcome data (snaps, all-conference, draft) is the natural next step.

Talent vs Results: does recruiting become winning?

Season records and SP+ from CollegeFootballData joined to each program's rolling 4-class talent composite (HS + portal ratings). Above the diagonal of expectations = coaching and development adding wins; below it = talent leaking value.

The Over/Underachiever Quadrant

2020 was the COVID season — most programs played 5–10 games, so windows that include 2020 mix shortened seasons into the win percentages.
Follows the class-year window in the control bar (completed seasons only).

Season Scoreboard: Wins vs Talent on Hand

2020 win totals are not comparable to other seasons — the COVID year cut most schedules to 5–10 games (Arizona played just 5).
When the bars beat the dashed line's trajectory, the staff is outcoaching its talent — Arizona 2025 under the new defense is the case study.

Recruiting Pipelines: click any dot for the player card

Shaded shapes = your team's state footprint; the compare-to team's pipeline shows in its color.

Distance Traveled from High School to College (Farthest to Closest)

Distance Lab: how far does your class travel?

Tap or hover any dot for the recruit card; pin it to open their 247Sports page.

Miles from Home by Position

Distances need a high-school hometown, so portal transfers can't appear here.

About the data

Everything here depends on what programs report and what 247Sports lists — heights, weights, ratings, and rosters are best-available numbers, not certified measurements. Treat small differences between teams accordingly.

  • Recruiting classes: 247Sports commit lists, classes 2016–2026, all 16 Big 12 programs, football and basketball. Portal transfers are included for 2021–2026; the 'Players' control switches between HS commits, commits + transfers, or transfers only. Every chart caption states which pool it shows.
  • Current rosters: 247Sports team roster pages, scraped June 2026.
  • Season records and SP+: CollegeFootballData.com, seasons 2016–2025 (football).
  • Sizes: heights and weights are as listed. Recruiting heights run optimistic — about a quarter of Big 12 signees are listed shorter on the roster than they were as recruits (Weight Room → Reality Check). Treat any listed height as ±1 inch.
  • Locations: high schools are geocoded, and each result is checked against its claimed state before it can appear on the map. Transfers have no high-school origin, so they don't appear in distance-based views.
  • Blue chips (90+): counted from the rating on 247's team pages. 247's Composite runs about a point lower for borderline players, so counts can differ by 1–2 per class depending on which you use.
  • Coach eras: a class belongs to the staff that ran its signing window. Mid-cycle changes are judgment calls; edit R/coach_eras.R to disagree.
  • Refreshing: ratings re-rank and late commits land all cycle. Re-run scripts/refreshClassYear.R for the active class, scripts/scrapeRosters.R for rosters, and scripts/fetchOutcomes.R after each season.

Feedback & custom builds

This app is built and maintained by Desert Data Labs. Spotted a data error, have a feature idea, or want a tool like this built for your program, conference, or business?

desertdatalabs@gmail.com

Custom dashboards, scrapers, and analytics for sports and beyond.

What's next

The team table (R/team_config.R) already carries a conference column, so expansion is mostly adding rows and re-running the scrapers:

  1. All Power conferences — add SEC, Big Ten, and ACC schools; every board, map, and lab picks them up. This also completes the home-state retention picture (right now a recruit who leaves for USC or Oregon is invisible).
  2. Conference vs conference — the same size, development, and retention metrics aggregated at the conference level.
  3. Player-level outcomes — team results are in (Talent vs Results tab). The next step is per-player: snap counts, all-conference honors, and draft picks joined to each signee, so classes can be graded on what players became rather than how they were rated at 18.
Built by Desert Data Labs · feedback, bug reports, or want something like this built for your program? desertdatalabs@gmail.com