Bear with me for a minute, please. I was at Six Flags on Saturday with a group of friends, and as is the case with any trip to an amusement park, there was inevitably a ton of time spent waiting in lines, and thus, the conversations went in all sorts of weird directions.

One of those friends grew up in Champaign, Ill., and consequently grew up a die-hard fan of University of Illinois sports. At one point, while we were between playing the movie game and ghost, this friend said to me, “Isn’t it unbelievable that Illinois, the Texas Bowl champions, had three players drafted before any Stanford players were drafted, even though Stanford won the Orange Bowl?” Indeed, Corey Liuget (18th overall), Mikel Leshoure (57th) and Martez Wilson (72nd) of Illinois all went before Stanford nose tackle Sione Fua (97th).

What my friend was getting at, it turns out, was that he believes Illinois perennially underachieves in football. That got me thinking: what do NFL Draft results say about the schools that the players come from? What does it say about Stanford, the No. 4 team in the nation at the end of last season, not having a player picked until the last pick of the third round?

Well, I’ll start by addressing the obvious. Had Andrew Luck declared for the NFL Draft, he would have been the first overall selection — no ifs, ands or buts about it. So when considering this question, take that into account.

Obviously, there is some correlation between good college programs and NFL Draft picks. Auburn won the national championship last season and had Cam Newton and Nick Fairley picked in the first round, going first and 13th overall, respectively. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Miami was a dominant college program, Hurricane players absolutely filled up the draft boards. Same goes for USC players about five years ago. As those programs have fallen off a bit, so have the number of players heading to the NFL as high draft picks.

While Auburn and other powers like Alabama (four first-rounders) and Wisconsin (two first-rounders) were schools frequently uttered by Commissioner Goodell on draft night, some other universities that found their ways into the top rounds were more surprising. In fact, five schools had multiple first-round picks this year. Nobody is surprised by the three mentioned above. The other two, however — Baylor and Colorado — are two perennial bottom feeders in the Big-12 (and now Pac-12, in Colorado’s case). Sure, Baylor had a decent season last year, but it was no Stanford — and there is no need to rehash Colorado’s disastrous season(s), but let’s just say it involved a $2 million buyout of a coach that was once seen as un-fireable.

So what does this all mean? My gut reaction is to say that this feeds into the old mantra that football is the ultimate team game. Anyone who has ever played a down of organized football has been told that everyone on the field matters. Ten guys can do a perfect job, but if one player misses a block, misses a tackle or drops a pass, the down goes to hell. One man does not a team make — or something like that.

How about the coaching staffs of these schools? What does it say about Jim Harbaugh and his staff that he could build a national power with little or no first-round NFL talent? We may see some of that talent develop down the line, but it’s still a pretty impressive feat. On the other hand, it doesn’t look so good for Ron Zook of Illinois, Dan Hawkins (since deposed) of Colorado and Art Briles of Baylor (who deserves some slack, as he has taken the Bears’ program out of the dumps).

Yes, college football is a different game than NFL football. There are system-grounded players in college that don’t succeed in the NFL. San Francisco 49ers fans would probably point to Alex Smith and call him one of those players. Colt Brennan, the former Hawaii star and Heisman finalist, is one of those players.

There are also the players that are drafted because of their upside, some of whom weren’t major contributors to their college teams. This was the case with Jake Locker of Washington — who was a major disappointment this season but still was drafted eighth overall — and Robert Quinn of North Carolina, who was suspended last season.

But maybe this all means nothing, and Stanford was simply a younger team, and its stars — like Luck and offensive tackle Jonathan Martin — will be drafted high down the line. Perhaps Stanford’s talent was better dispersed than other teams. The Cardinal had three players selected in rounds 4-7 of the draft, Illinois had one and Baylor and Colorado each had two.

I’m doing something I don’t like to do — leaving this column without a definitive answer — but that’s only because I don’t think there is one. Of course, it’s probably a combination of all of this that explains the correlation between the NFL Draft and college performance.

Daniel Bohm isn’t sure what explains the correlation between the length of his beard and the amount of personal space he has at parties. Draw up some charts at [email protected].