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I am admittedly on shaky ground here as I am no recruiting or Rivals expert. However, a cursory review of the Rivals rankings reveals a slightly different story than the doom and gloom provided in this forum. SMU is shown with 2 three-star recruits and 2.15 "average stars". This is more than Rice (1, 1.42), Houston (1, 2.05), Tuland (1, 2.05), and Tulsa (1, 2.05). UTEP has more three-star recruits (3) but a lower average stars (2.13). In total, this ranks SMU with UTEP at the top of a very closely bunched CUSA West heap in what is clearly a very subjective, unscientific process.

I have no idea how they assign points but I will assume that it is a further subranking system beneath the already subjective star system. As with any subjective layer located beneath a primary subjective layer. as one drills down the process becomes much more imprecise. So, if one considers only the number of three star players recruited and the average stars for each team, it appears that SMU is at the high end of the CUSA West rankings.

In truth, isn't this exactly where SMU belongs? Certainly, SMU has accomplished nothing on the field of play to distinguish it from its CUSA peers. As long as SMU struggles to find the good side of .500 and as long as it is associated with its peer institutions in CUSA, I can find no compelling reason for SMU to do any better than it has done this year. A disastrous recruiting year, apparently not. A breakthrough year, certainly not. About what one should expect given the current state of SMU athletics, likely so.

When SMU differentiates itself from its CUSA peers on the field of play, it will have a reason to expect a like kind differentiation in recruiting success. Winning breeds winning which breeds more winning (see TCU). Unfortunately, losing does likewise.

SMU deserves this, they have a good underrated class with two very good players in McCann and Burley who are going to make big impacts right away at SMU. Rivals recognizes this and will look real good in a few years.

some but not all of the low ratings for Rice, Tulane, Tulsa and Marshall are due to recently added not yet rated players. I don't know why they do that because it artificially lowers the schools's rating Same thing might happen to SMU if they added the 3+ missing recruits Cunningham, Degroat and the LB whose name I forgot. None are likely to be highly rated and adding them as unrated players which they are right now would cause our average rating to plummet. You are right though that SMU's class is right in the middle of CUSA West with not a single class really distinguishing itself. On the other hand, Southern Miss and UAB are among the Top 5 or so non-BCS classes.

Not trying to spin anything, just posing a question:

I wonder if regional rankings affect all of these national recruitng rankings as well. Most of CUSA West gets their recruits from Texas. There are more division 1 prospects in Texas, and thus more “competition” to being ranked in the top tier of the state as a player. CUSA East gets most of their players from a handful of southern sates. Are rankings more generous in smaller states (see Mississippi) because there is less “competition” for being ranked in the top tier in the state as a player? If that’s true then maybe you take a decent three star in this state like Burley, and he becomes a 4 star in Mississippi. Or a three star there that is a two star here. Not to take anything away from Mcann, but that could be the same situation with him being from Oklahoma.

The point is, it may be harder to compare Southern Miss’s recruiting rankings directly to SMU’s given the above logic.

Stallion wrote:some but not all of the low ratings for Rice, Tulane, Tulsa and Marshall are due to recently added not yet rated players. I don't know why they do that because it artificially lowers the schools's rating Same thing might happen to SMU if they added the 3+ missing recruits Cunningham, Degroat and the LB whose name I forgot. None are likely to be highly rated and adding them as unrated players which they are right now would cause our average rating to plummet. You are right though that SMU's class is right in the middle of CUSA West with not a single class really distinguishing itself. On the other hand, Southern Miss and UAB are among the Top 5 or so non-BCS classes.

Say they add a guy today, a guy with whom Rivals apparently is unfamiliar, but he has been a very productive player at a very strong school (a team that has lots of other talent). Would they quickly slap a two-star rating on the guy?

Just curious.

we'll see. Sometimes they just move on to other things. They finalize these ratings in a week. I wished they just didn't include a player in the average until he is rated.

I agree with you -- averaging the class without ranking a player makes zero sense.