Dumb Rivals Question

[me@smu]

What you should get worked up about are the offers a kid has or doesn't have-especially when it is team wide. The better players receive more and better offers and the teams with more and better players win football games. Players with more and better offers are rated higher which is perfectly logical for a recruiting service to acknowledge. Take Head Out of Sand. The evidence is simply overwhelming especially at this university over time. The long term success or lack of success at each university in this state can be graphed in almost perfect harmony with success in recruiting when adjusting for strength of schedule.

You are right the correct thing to look at is offers, not sure where I said anything different. And yes offers tend to bring recognition to a recruit which usually makes the rivals/scouts guys go check him out. THat said there are plenty of people that fall through the cracks year and year. Or how else do we explain things like 2* recruits becoming NFL player of the years? Or the fact that there were more 3* recruits drafted in the first round last year than 5*s? Grant you that there are more 3* to begin with but fact remains lower rated players can be found/coached.

Is there a difference between a 5* player and the average 2*...absolutely!!! But does that mean that a 5.4 rated player should automatically be better than a 5.1? So why do we get worked up about it?
Just another example...Fred Rouse was 5* mister everything WR when he went to FSU...he couldn't get on the field because of 3* De'cody Fagg.

Tom Dienhart is doing some analysis for the SportingNews about how teams have done versus where their recruiting has been. Interesting to see that Michigan averaged essentially the best class in the Big 10 over these five years and has not a single Big 10 championship to show for it.
Florida leads the SEC and does have one National Championship but doesn't have a single other SEC East championship much less an SEC championship.

There is more to football than signing a bunch of 5* players...

[Stallion]

I have fully analyzed the NFL Draft in each of the last 2 years on this board. You do realize there are proportionately much fewer players assigned a 5 star(something like 37 nationwide from memory) and 4 star than 3 star(over 140 in Texas alone). The result of the analyses I've done and I've seen is that for each drop in star rating there is a precipitous drop in the percentage of players that are highly drafted into the NFL. I think the only two stars in the First Round Last Year was an Arkansas DE prospect who went from a recruited WR at 6-6-205 to a First Round DE prospect after gaining about 60 pounds and a MAC TE prospect who put on about 80 pounds to become a gargantun OLM prospect. There are rare exceptions to the Rule which get plenty of publicity from people who don't take the time and effort to check and have a vested interest in saying see recruiting doesn't matter. The evidence is overwhelming that it does.

[Stallion]

HERE'S THE ANALYSIS I DID OF THE NFL DRAFT LAST YEAR

the numbers speak for themselves:

First Round: 5 (5 Stars) 17 (4 Stars) 7 (3 Stars) 2 (2 Stars)=32

Second Round: 3 (5 Stars) 10 (4 Stars) 11( 3 Stars) 6 (2 Stars)

Third Round: 2 (5 Stars) 6 (4 Stars) 18 (3 Stars) 7 (2 Stars)

In summary, 79% of the Top 100 Draftees were at least 3 Stars, 16% were 2 stars and 5 were not in the Database. It is also interesting to note that about half of those 2 stars were nationally ranked by Rivals at their positions so they were high 2 stars. A high percentage of these 2 stars attended schools known for taking academic risks and non-qualifiers such Hawaii(2), Fresno (2), UTEP, NMSU, SJSU, Boise, Illinois St. one kid Jacobi Jones never made it to Baylor and went to Lane College. etc. The players who didn't even appear in the Rivals database very likely also affected by academic issues.

35 out of the First 64 players(Rounds 1 & 2) (55%) were 5 stars or 4 Stars and incredible number since there aren't many 5 Stars or 4 Stars and they make up only a small fraction of Division 1A players. BTW if Young, Ernie Sims and Bush and others had not turned pro early that number would easily be over 60%. 53 out of the First 64 players were 5, 4 or 3 stars which is something like 83% another incredible number. Again number would be close to 90% if players had not turned pro early. I'd say Rivals may do a better job of projecting 18 years olds than the NFL Draft experts and that's 1-2 years BEFORE they get into a college training program.

Oh those 3 First Round kids which Rivals missed on were Jamal Anderson from Arkansas who went from 6-6, 205 in high school to 6-6, 280 in college, Amobi Okoye who was signed by Louisville as a 15 year old and is only 19 right now and a TE from Central Michigan who put on about 65 pounds and moved from TE to the OLM-Rivals can hardly be questioned for missing on those types of kids.

Final Rivals Grade: A

[Big Hoss]

I don't think anyone is trying to say that recruiting doesn't matter. I think maybe they are saying that we can be successful in CUSA very quickly with 2 & 3 star recruits that fit into JJ's system. Sure, we'd all love to see us move up and start grabbing 4 star recruits, but my guess is that we need to see more success on the field to start getting that kind of talent.

As far as guys taken in the NFL draft, there have been a lot of players who were very successful at the college level that either went late in NFL drafts or not at all. I'd take a large number of those guys any day on our team.

[me@smu]

So the end result of all that analysis is that the kids who rank higher are better individual players correct? They get drafted earlier, forgetting my admission that there were many more three stars and the only reason for bringing up the draft was to show that players 3* and below can be found.

Lets try this another way...Miami which has averaged a top 10 recruiting class over the past 5 years ended the year ranked 60 something. VT who rarely get a top 25 recruiting class won the ACC.

Texas who averages again a top 10 at the least ended up ranked below Missouri and Kansas who averaged a much lower recruiting class.

The overall point is that our current class of 2*s and hopefully possibly a 3* provided JJ's system might allow us to be competitive with the Tulsas of the world. So lets not get worked up about a 5.2 to a 5.1 or a 5.4 to a 5.2 if the person fits what JJ wants to.

Oh and just to stop the question...Recruiting absoluately matters. But that doesn't mean that how Rivals thinks our class compares against Tulsa is gonna matter.

[Stallion]

the top recruiting class in CUSA West has exactly 4 three stars. NTSU has 7. So yes you can win in CUSA West with 2 stars and a sprinkling of 3 stars and some great Division 1A transfers thrown in but if the goal is Top 25 then you aren't going to get there. Also Southern Miss and UCF are kicking ass-probably report on that toward signing date. Don't have a feel for recruiting in that part of the country to know but there is some speculation that a significant number of those kids may have academic issues.

[me@smu]

Completely agree that the future classes need to take a bump in star rating to even begin to compete as a top 25 program.

[ponyboy]

Here's a wrench in this whole thing. Jones won at Hawaii with average at best WAC talent. How did that happen?

[Stallion]

how in the hell do you know? He won with 35 transfers-the vast majority of which aren't even used for calculating Rivals rankings including Javon Bess, Colt Brennan and the transfer on Defense from Penn St. among others.

[me@smu]

Problem with throwing Hawaii into the discussion is that you need to clarify what exactly is a top 25 team? Not meaning any disrespect to our UH fans on the board and just my opinion, but you put Hawaii with that talent into a BCS conference except Big 10 and they don't win the conference nor are ranked in the top 25. Too many losses.

The rankings for top 25 stopped being the actual 25 best teams in America a while ago...in my opinion.

So JJ could take our current talent and get us ranked in the top 25 next year or the year after by making a huge run through CUSA...but does that really mean we can compete with a vast majority of the BCS type schools?

[ponyboy]

how in the hell do you know? He won with 35 transfers-the vast majority of which aren't even used for calculating Rivals rankings including Javon Bess, Colt Brennan and the transfer on Defense from Penn St. among others.

In the post above you say that it's not possible to get to Top 25 with "2 stars and a sprinkling of 3 stars and some great Division IA transfers." Isn't that exactly what Jones did at Hawaii? Or, maybe just maybe, do actual x's and o's matter?

[Stallion]

a sprinkling?-35 transfers is more like a deluge-not that there is anything wrong with that. The point remains that Rivals awards ZERO points in its rankings for college transfers and guys who enter schools in alternative ways by spending a year in CC to get eligible w/o playing. Just like we will get zero credit for Odiari.

[ponyboy]

Problem with throwing Hawaii into the discussion is that you need to clarify what exactly is a top 25 team? Not meaning any disrespect to our UH fans on the board and just my opinion, but you put Hawaii with that talent into a BCS conference except Big 10 and they don't win the conference nor are ranked in the top 25. Too many losses.

The rankings for top 25 stopped being the actual 25 best teams in America a while ago...in my opinion.

So JJ could take our current talent and get us ranked in the top 25 next year or the year after by making a huge run through CUSA...but does that really mean we can compete with a vast majority of the BCS type schools?

Hawaii got beat by arguably the best team in college football. They were definitely Top 25 material.

[ponyboy]

a sprinkling?-35 transfers is more like a deluge-not that there is anything wrong with that

The word "sprinkling" referred to the 3 stars, but whatever. You make a good point -- but I'll submit you still underemphasize the importance of coaching.

[Stallion]

and you've severely underestimated the talent that was in that program from non-traditional means-not to mention the Polynesians who flew under the Rivals radar. I doubt Rivals has a single scout that really knows Hawaii High School Football or analyzes Tongans etc.