College Football Recruiting

[Hungary Jack]

This whole star ranking system employed by Rivals and Scout is pretty much nonsense. What's particularly damming is the fact that bigger classes are given more weight and thus ranked higher. But bigger classes are due to attrition at higher levels, often the result of transfers and drop-outs. In other words, a program that cannot develop its recruits is often portrayed as a recruiting "winner". That's great for headlines, but bad for student athletes.

It's nearly impossible to rank a class in terms of talent, but I think it's more sensible to rank them in terms of offers from competing schools. If Mizzou is gaining commitments from guys recruited by, say for illustration, Tulane, Central Michigan, and Colorado State, that's not so good. But if they are signing guys recruited by, say, Oklahoma, Texas, Ole Miss, and Oregon, then bully for Mizzou.

Northwestern got commitments from players with more BCS school offers than anytime in its history. They signed players with offers from Nebraska (3 guys), Kansas, West Virginia, Stanford (3), Cincinnati, Texas Tech, Penn State, and a bunch of other B10, Pac 10 and B12 schools. It is a big change from even 5 years ago.

How did your team do?

[Leroy]

[Hungary Jack]

South Dakota State has 5 signees, but they are all really nice guys.

[Maclowery]

The knowledgeable Iowa fans at my bar were talking about our guys last night. General consensus is that Ferentz got a great group of guys, despite not ranking as high according to the national evaluators. I saw an article in our paper that 16 of our 21 were on the honor roll. Iowa City's a party-hardy town, and has had problems (as every college does) with the football kids enjoying the fruits of life a little more than they should. So it's good to go for character guys.

Ferentz kind of reminds me of LaDuncan, in that he seems to have his own pixie dust to sprinkle on players that makes them perform at a higher level than they were expected to. I hope some of the recruits beef up quickly, as we lost most of our starting offensive line.

[Sutter'sBeard]

By and large, they hit more than they miss as far as ranking the individual players. Not as sure about whether the schools rank nationally translates to winning a bunch of games. A way to fact check this is on Scout.com you can go back several years and look at the classes. Many of the 4 and 5 star guys are in the NFL.

[PurdueSTL]

Most folks in and around the Purdue program, from what I've read, are very pleased...Purdue went into Chigago and plucked a hey--uuge DT from St. Rita, and also scored LOIs from several highy-regarded DBs (most of the Boilermaker secondary graduated in 2009)

Lots of Florida speed, and a few big uglies for the OL and DL...I'm pleased, i guess

[Hungary Jack]

The knowledgeable Iowa fans at my bar were talking about our guys last night. General consensus is that Ferentz got a great group of guys, despite not ranking as high according to the national evaluators. I saw an article in our paper that 16 of our 21 were on the honor roll. Iowa City's a party-hardy town, and has had problems (as every college does) with the football kids enjoying the fruits of life a little more than they should. So it's good to go for character guys.

Ferentz kind of reminds me of LaDuncan, in that he seems to have his own pixie dust to sprinkle on players that makes them perform at a higher level than they were expected to. I hope some of the recruits beef up quickly, as we lost most of our starting offensive line.

I think Ferentz is particularly skilled at developing talent.

[phins]

By and large, they hit more than they miss as far as ranking the individual players. Not as sure about whether the schools rank nationally translates to winning a bunch of games. A way to fact check this is on Scout.com you can go back several years and look at the classes. Many of the 4 and 5 star guys are in the NFL.

Yes, they do identify the top-20 or so players pretty well normally, but players and prospects get stars a lot of times by whether or not the school supports their camps etc. This is a fairly new revelation, talked about by private schools more and more (who don't support the sites/camps like the big public schools do).

It is completely common to see a kid be a two or three star kid, and sign with Florida, Notre Dame, USC et al and instantly jump to a four or five star kid.

Players who get out to the camps, and are seen by more coaches/evaluators etc. instead of the ones who commit early, tend to get more hype/exposure as well. Rivals, scout, ESPN all suck pretty badly at evaluating kids after the cream of the crop, and the rankings are kind of a guide for a myriad of reasons. What should be evaluated is how teams fill their needs with athletes, and the potential of them etc. Kind of a blend of how it's done now.

Alabama three and four years ago ranked #18 and #21 in recruiting classes, and though they had some sophomores help a ton (Ingram most noteworthy), the backbone of their national title team was from those classes.

Three years ago, Miami had the #1 recruiting class in America, and they sucked this year. Ryan Moore, Bryan Rolle, Willie Williams, Demetri Stewart, Kyle (QB, crap forgot his last name), Akeem Jolla, Lance Leggett, Leon Williams, and a few more I'm forgetting were all FIVE STAR kids out of the classes following the 2001 national championship teams. Haven't heard of most of them? Don't worry, they sucked. Meanwhile, Santana Moss came to the U on a track scholarship, and was a two star football player. Ed Reed was a two star football out of Louisiana, no one wanted. Jeremy Shockey was a two star kid out of Oklahoma offered no scholarships out of high school, so he had to go JUCO for a year. Clinton Portis came from Gainesville (home of Florida) and was only offered a schooly by miami as a two star kid. Ray Lewis didn't sign until May as a two star kid because no one offered him until then.

Yeah, I'd rather sign the five star, high impact athetes if given the choice, but it's not an exact science by any means.

[phins]

The knowledgeable Iowa fans at my bar were talking about our guys last night. General consensus is that Ferentz got a great group of guys, despite not ranking as high according to the national evaluators. I saw an article in our paper that 16 of our 21 were on the honor roll. Iowa City's a party-hardy town, and has had problems (as every college does) with the football kids enjoying the fruits of life a little more than they should. So it's good to go for character guys.

Ferentz kind of reminds me of LaDuncan, in that he seems to have his own pixie dust to sprinkle on players that makes them perform at a higher level than they were expected to. I hope some of the recruits beef up quickly, as we lost most of our starting offensive line.

I think Ferentz is particularly skilled at developing talent.

I think Ferentz is one of the more underrated coaches out there. What he does at Iowa is close to miraculous...