Quote:
Originally Posted by coldsteel120
Addressing the original post, who ranks these players? The star system is a gimmick to sell subscriptions.
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I don't think that's really fair. There's nothing inherently wrong with the star rating's system and they aren't made up. It's just that too many people take them as gospel and don't understand the limitations.
The problem is that there are a relatively small number of groups (really it's just Rivals, Scout and more recently ESPN) that somewhat independently rank kids. But there are literally thousands and thousands of kids across the country to rank and typically all they have to go by is stats, height, weight and video submitted by the school, the family or in some cases street agents that only show what they want you to see.
It's not just high school seniors, but there days you get 9th, 10th and 11th graders and in some cases kids even younger. We're talking HUGE numbers of kids to review.
So they take all this data and try to somewhat quantify it but there are just too many talented kids out there to do a really good job, so they tend to follow the hype or kids with gawdy stats or kids who have a lot of early interest from major programs.
I don't know the exact numbers, but I would guess that they are able to look at less than 5% of the kids seriously by the time they release their first star rankings during the junior year. And they are typically the ones with the most gawdy stats or who have the most interest from schools.
So then a few things happen. First, they have their sponsored events where for the first time, the recruiting services and in the most cases coaches get to get real measurements of these kids and really see how these kids perform on the field compared to each other. That effects the rankings. Some kids move up while others move down.
And then there are junior days and events at the schools like FNL where they see them again and in some cases might get to see kids they haven't reviewed yet in action. Again, rankings change and new kids might get ranked.
Then when major programs like UF are interested in a recruit nobody's really heard of, those recruiting services will go back and actually look at their tape. And you'll suddenly see a kid go from unranked to 3 or 4 stars.
Bottom line is that it's not that the rankings are bad but that a relatively small number of kids really get ranked accurately until they are seen.
In most cases, I think coaches would very generally say that at signing day, the recruiting services rankings for the kids in their class are fairly accurate. Certainly coaches might think a kid should be rated one star up or down.
But even the coaches can't really tell how good these kids are until they get them in practice.
Bottom line, while they are by no means an exact science, I think the star ratings are more than just a gimmick and I think that for the most part, the guys doing them know what they're doing. The big issue is the number of kids to be looked at and the inability until they have the camps to see these kids head-to-head.
But to be honest different people have different perceptions of what fast his so everybody can be right
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