2009 Rivals 100/250 recruiting chart

I think the lack of top 100 recruits is indicative of the 3-9 season. If UM has a good year in 2009, I bet you'll see around 5-6 top 100 guys. There definitely going to be room on the defensive side of the ball at LB, Line, S to fill with top talent.

That site has some pretty intersting charts besides the top 100/250... Like how we got ripped on for not recruiting the state when it seems we are pretty much on par with a lot of the years under Carr... I also wasn't aware that we also got the #1 players from Michigan and Ohio in a year as recent as 2003. Charts. If only there was a pie chart.

top 100 and top 250 is measurables. Guys like Gallon, Forcier, Robinson and C. Gordon a usually in top 250 and not the 100 because they are a couple of inches too short or have yet to define their position at the next level.

it would be nice to have more top 100 guys, but if we're consistently filling the roster up with top 250 guys I think we'll be alright.

2 top 100 is indicative of the type of players RR goes after. A lot of the really small ninja slot type guys just don't get rated all that high because they are more of a system player. In terms of fitting the system more of the guys we picked up are def top 100 talent, but its verrrrry difficult for a guy under 5'10 to get a ton of love from the scouts.

It doesn't matter if Alabama brings in 10 5 star players or Utah brings in 20 one star players. For all the star-rated talent, Utah kicked Alabama's ass when it counted. If the stars mattered, TCU, Boise State and Fresno State shouldn't even bother fielding teams. And for the level of talent brought in year after year, and the level at which it's rated, Les Miles should take incredible heat for 5 losses last year.

What matters infinitely more than the star ratings are (1) weight training and conditioning; (2) keeping your players in a program so that they contribute as juniors and seniors; (3) keeping continuity in your coaching staff so players are used to their system; and (4) finding players with the inner drive to succeed.

Those factors are why Boise State and Utah have outperformed teams like Notre Dame and Florida State in the past few years. Honestly. Read Mitch Albom's column from the Freep today and stop obsessing over high school rankings. They're so stupid that one service has Will Campbell in the top 30 and another doesn't have him ranked top 150!

But, what do we know about Big Will? Great physical specimen, motivated, enrolled early, working his tail off. 4 years with this program and barring injury I'm fairly confident Campbell will be an All-America candidate. That's way more important than what ESPN subjectively thought of his performance while at Cass Tech.

and if we go 5-7, the number of top 250 guys will drop.

jg:

I really like your post, especially the list of four important attributes to a good program, but I disagree that the rankings "mean nothing."

Utah's defeat of Alabama doesn't neccessarily mean they are a better program; it just means that they beat them on that day. Also, Utah and Boise State, for the most part, play teams that are in the same boat as they are in recruiting rankings.

And if the rankings truly meant nothing, then Utah and Boise State would be the rule instead of the exception.

The four attributes that you list are indeed essential, but they don't do a lot of good if you don't have the talent to begin with.

Utah and Boise State play one or two good teams a year and have plenty of time and energy to get "sky high" for their bowl games.

Do you really think that either of those teams would even be a .500 team in SEC conference play?

In the SEC, you beat Alabama, and all that gets you is someone like GA, FL, or LSU the next week.

Utah and Boise are nice, uplifting stories. But they are anomalies, not norms.

I really do not agree with the rankings systems that we use. RR made the comment in a press confrence that basically he does not care how rivals or anybody else ranks a kid or our class. He said that he feels that he got the 2 best dual threat QBs in the nation.
In keeping with the comments made about a person's height impacting their star rankings. I did not follow recruiting when Hart came to UM so I do not know how many stars he got. I would guess with him only being 5'9" and with his lack of true speed 4.6 or so. I would think he probably only got 3 stars but when you think of what he meant to the team for the 4 years he was here in hind sight I would say that he should have had 5 stars. True passion is not reflected in a star ranking and that is something that makes so much of a diffenrence.

First off, Michigan recruited four players from Michigan this season. On that page the history over the past five or six years of the Carr era showed he only averaged about five or six in-state recruits. Some folks liked to claim/bash RR for not recruiting in-state, yet he really didn't do any different than Lloyd.

Second, I know there's always a running joke here about the number of kids North Carolina recruits, but did you see Mississippi on that list? 37 recruits for this fall? 37?!? WTF?!

Rankings in general are flawed. They are merely estimations on how good a team or player is based on previous observations and statistics.

Recruiting rankings are one obvious example of this (Mike Hart was a 3-star, Kevin Grady was a 5-star). However, team rankings also are often flawed (Utah over Alabama). In the end, only large gaps in rankings mean anything. A top ten team almost always wins against a team not in the top 25. A 5-star recruit is almost always better than a 2-star recruit. But even then exceptions to this rule are fairly common.

Finally, the biggest problem with recruiting rankings is that the top 100 players are scattered across 50 states, the D.C. area, and Canada. They don't play against each other in most cases. Furthermore, the talent they face is fairly weak in general. Consequently, rating them is exceptionally difficult.