Sylvester McMonkey McBean Helps Settle the Pat White Question Once and for All

Can anyone help me get those two random bits of HTML out of this post?

gets 3 stars, heh?

First, I think a five-star for Breaston is too high. I still don't see that you take NFL into it, and many have pointed out that the Super Galacticon Spread Rich Rodriguez-Only recruit is not rated as highly by the Rivals or Scout people because, well, they just don't understand it all, and they are total morons like everybody else in the world. So, I think it should be based more on what they accomplish at Michigan and not anything based on NFL other than possibly where they were drafted.

Second: I agree with you on players that leave. If they don't sniff the field, no rating either way. On players that do leave before their eligibility is used up, ya got to figure in some sort of penalty, though, because that is what you'd have to call a "miss"--but not much, maybe just a .10-.25 star.

Third: I love this concept and want to see how Rich Rod's recruits do over their careers, especially compared to Lloyd. I'm hoping the criticism of Lloyd and player development turns out to be correct when compared to Rodriguez.

Even with the last couple classes shown above, you can see how Lloyd's staff started slipping in recruiting toward the end. That 2003 class is awesome.

I'm not sure that there is a 1:1 correlation between the Rivals rankings and the McBean rankings. Example (5 star):

Elite, Dominant player, Complete package. Projects to the highest level.

vs.

Stud. Multi-year starter. All-something. NFL player.

I'll take "All-Something" to mean First team All conference in a BCS conference. That is 6 conferences x 22 players per all conference team = 132 -- plus kickers -- 5 star players. Does Rivals hand out 100 5 star ratings that often?

The NFL drafts (32 players/round x 7 rounds = 224 players) which leaves lots of room for the 4 stars to fit into the draft

I think that you are attaching some sort of superlative to the 5-star player that your definition doesn't hold (but may belong in it...) However, if you are attempting to compare Rivals Ratings to "McBean ratings", then you should (from a national perspective) have the same number of 5 stars...4 stars...3 stars...(which is admittedly hard to do). I would tighten up the definitions some more to give yourself a better guideline. 1st, 2nd team All-America and honorable mention definitely fit into this category. I think you have to ignore specialists (Sorry Zoltan--still a solid 4 star and probably Steve Breaston -- really only an AA KR, only a decent receiver. I'd ask about Chad Henne and Mike Hart too...but I could be convinced of 5 stars for them).

After seeing the first couple of images I expected your entire post to rhyme in the style of Seuss' writing. I was disappointed.

Lloyd Carr + Tom Brady = 6th round draft pick
Rich Rodriguez + Pat White = Nuff said

Michigan + RR + Barwis = the Victors, HAIL!!!

I'm not sure the NFL player stipulation for 4 and 5 stars is appropriate. We all have allowed that Rodriguez's players are great in college and being 5'3 might not make it to the NFL. Noel Devine isn't Adrian Peterson is what I'm saying, he also wouldn't be a 3 star. I mean Dan Mozes (sp?) on the weight training staff was an All American but barely got a phone call from NFL teams. The old Michigan would probably need the NFL Player distinction, and evaluating old classes could work for that, but moving forward with Rodriguez it's admitted his style is for college and success in the Pros is not that great a correlation for the skill and effectiveness of Michigan's current players.

Excellent diary! Some possible star updates...

2003

Chris Graham - should be 4 star, should not be rated same as Max Martin (3 star). 20 career starts, All b-10 Hon Men (2007)

2005

Justin Schifano - should be 2 star
Brandon Logan - should be 2 star
Johnny Sears - should be 2 star
Andre Criswell - should be star

These 4 guys have had the same impact as D. Cone (2 star) on this team. Little or no impact, invisible.

2006

Obi Ezeh - should be 4 star. Multi-yr starter, possible NFL player.

Greg Matthews - should be 3 star, weak or avg starter, similar career to Carlos Brown thus far.

Kates, Banks, Ferrara - should all be 2 stars, mostly invisible. Possible argument for Ferrera 3 star, but that was just because he was moved to OL for injury purposes. Probably will never see field again.

They will never learn. No, you can't teach a Sneech...

This is a great idea.

I think you're being too generous in dealing with people who leave the program. We never hear the full story of why someone leaves, but with someone like Dann O'Neil, it seems pretty clear that a big part of it was that he wasn't going to get much playing time. As of right now, he looks like a recruiting dud. But if you give him an N/A, it shows up as a neutral in the "McBean" rating, not as a negative.

To fix this, I suggest you take into account each player's performance after they leave Michigan. If Ryan Mallett turns into an all-world player at Arkansas, give him a five-star McBean rating. If O'Neil is an average lineman at Western Michigan, he's a two-star. If someone suffers a career-ending injury, make them an N/A.

Of course, that assumes that what you care about is each recruit's actual ability to play college football (which to me is the best way to judge a coach's recruiting ability). If you care only about their contributions at Michigan, stick with what you have.

hmmm I really like the thought you put into the post, ultimately time will tell, but that is so darn hard to wait on huh? Rating of the recruits vs on-field results are much like predicting the weather too far ahead.

You also seem to imply later in your post that Gothmog was an orc not sure this is entirely true, more likely a dark Numenorean along the lines of the Mouth of Sauron.

This is an interesting topic and one of those wonderful topics to sit back and discus with buddies over a beer or three. But, my thought is that if it is to have any meaning, it has to use the same criteria as the major ranking services. Dan chose Rivals which is fine. After a few minutes of digging, I was able to find this (I was a little suprised that it was not on one of their main menus as in ESPN/Scout rankings).

My thought in evaluating players through this exercise is that the rankings project talent and success, that is, a future tense. Dan, on the other hand, I think is looking for past tense, did they live up to expectations. Perhaps one way to evaluate talent is in draft position for at least the top players, the rest may require a few adult beverages worth of conversation to sort out.

Rivals Star and Rating System

"Players are also ranked on their quality with a star ranking. A five-star prospect is considered to be one of the nation's top 25-30 players, four star is a top 250-300 or so player, three-stars is a top 750 level player, two stars means the player is a mid-major prospect and one star means the player is not ranked.

The ranking system ranks prospects on a numerical scale from 6.1-4.9.

6.1 Franchise Player; considered one of the elite prospects in the country, generally among the nation's top 25 players overall; deemed to have excellent pro potential; high-major prospect

6.0-5.8 All-American Candidate; high-major prospect; considered one of the nation's top 300 prospects; deemed to have pro potential and ability to make an impact on college team

5.7-5.5 All-Region Selection; considered among the region's top prospects and among the top 750 or so prospects in the country; high-to-mid-major prospect; deemed to have pro potential and ability to make an impact on college team

5.4-5.0 Division I prospect; considered a mid-major prospect; deemed to have limited pro potential but definite Division I prospect; may be more of a role player

4.9 Sleeper; no Rivals.com expert knew much, if anything, about this player; a prospect that only a college coach really knew about."

ESPN/Scout Star and Rating System

"Five-star player: 85 to 100
A potential immediate game-changer at the major college level who could push for all-conference recognition as a true freshman. Will enter college with elite skills needed to create mismatches against top-level competition. A future All-American candidate.

Four-star player: 79.5 to 84.99
A potential 3- to 4-year starter at the major college level with the superior skills needed to see early playing time and make a significant impact during his college career.

Three-star player: 75.0 to 79.49
A player with the skills to develop into a solid starter at the major college level. Potential high-ceiling prospect with the ability to make an impact during his career.

Two-star player: 68 to 74.99
A player who flashes developable major college talent and could be a late bloomer. Potential solid starter at the mid-major level.

One-star player: 55 to 67.9
Player does not show the physical tools or skill set at this point to project at the major college level, but could contribute at mid-major or FCS programs."

I like the direction you are going. My concern: while the comparison between Carr's program and Rodriguez's program might be somewhat meaningful, I don't think it really tells us all that much unless we're able to compare his body of work to his contemporaries. In other words, how did his "Class of 2009" turn out relative to other top recruiting classes of the same year? If his "McBean" rating is 0.5 lower than his Rivals overall score, is that dip normal across all of college football when converting from Rivals to McBean? Do top-level BCS teams fare better in this Rivals-McBean transform than mid-major programs? I wish such an in-depth analysis didn't require so much work.

While it doesn't show quite the same thing, an easier study would be to compare overall team recruiting scores with performance on the field. The arbitrary nature of both scheduling and voting makes the potential study somewhat less clear-cut than it otherwise might be, but performance on the field could be weighted with respect to opponents, and could be analyzed for comparisons within conferences.

I think the "underperformance" of Lloyd's recruits is basically what you'd expect to see under normal conditions. That is, regression. I presume that 3 stars is the mean for BCS recruits.

As for injuries and transfers, I'd prefer that be compared to some normal attrition expectation than simply thrown out. Staying healthy, as Will Carroll says, is its own skill and being able to identify and maintain health is a potential marginal (dis)advantage. The White Sox, for instance, have been cited in particular for their ability to keep pitchers healthy and performing where other MLB clubs do not. Given the Barwis' Gym Advantage™, that may be where Rodriguez's ability to "turn" 3-stars into better than average players lies. Healthier players mean relatively more lottery tickets.

My guess is that players that are smaller than positional norms are most prone to additional injury, which could have implications for the way Rodriguez runs his program. Barwis may simply be getting these smaller players to normal attrition expectation.

Obviously, this post and the idea are excellent. It would be nice if Scout/Rivals did this of their own accord. The alternative is like running PECOTA just once in a player's career. New data should lead to new assessments. It would be nice to have a continually updated idea of the talent available in every BCS program, that's certain. In the very least, we could certainly use the wisdom of crowds to have our players assessed, as you suggest. May I suggest google forms?

For the record, it's my guess that Lloyd's players had above average injury-related attrition. Probably above average transfer-related attrition as well, but that's to be expected for a top program. As a rule, a player will prefer to play over sitting and programs with less talent will always present that opportunity.

On the other hand, if you're transferring, that means there's a spot for you, which presupposes a departure elsewhere. If transferring is a zero-sum game, then high transfer levels might indicate something else about the program's quality.

Dan, really enjoyed this diary as I've wanted to do something similar to test my hypothesis that the Northeast and Midwest is underscouted and whose players receive slightly lower guru rating than they deserve.

I read the diary this morning and reread it and I realized something. There's really two types of McBean Ratings. It really depends on what you want to measure.

1)The rating purely measures the contribution to the college footbal team over 4 years and nothing else. Thus tranfering would be a huge ding, perfomance on the field in college would be the main focus, and what they did in in the NFL would be irrelevant.

2)Purely a measure of what kind of player the prospect becomes. In this case the NFL is almost the only thing that matter and where no NFL data exists you would have to look at the player's most productive year(s) in college.

Comparing the guru ratings to McBean Rating 1 would tell you if the how well coaches developed talent, keep talent on campus, identified talent that fit their schemes, and something about their ability to judge talent in general.

Comparing the guru ratings to McBean Rating 2 would tell you purely how well the coaches identify talent when they are still prospects and also something about how well they develop talent.

I think most of us would care more about the first rating or scenario because it directly affects the performance of our team.

But if we compare these two McBean ratings together I think it would get really interesting. It would tell us how much we got out of our best players compared to their performance in the NFL. Most of the time a we would want our McBean 1 rating to be higher than the McBean 2 rating because it would show our players performed at a higher level in college than in the NFL and thus our couches got the most out of their talent as possible. The opposite would suck and mean that are good players were becoming great players in the NFL (think last few years of Carr era).

This was kind of wordy but I find this kind of study fascinating and depending on what we want to measure we can find out a lot about how our couching staff identifies, utilizes, and developes talent.

So what do you guys think? Is there a clear distinction between the two McBean ratings and would both ratings be useful?

All:

Thanks for the extensive contributions so far. As this post has tumbled off the main page, I am going to process all the comments and post a McBean update this week.

Thanks.

Dan

Although the NFL draft is an important metric, I too agree with a number of you that it should not be the end all and be all in terms of handing out stars, we should use caution in too easily upgrading guys because we like them and their competition. The star rating system is not an internal only metric, but, as in recruiting, should measure how our athletes stack up against the best athletes in the nation from all the other programs. It is not unlike the question of how many stars would you assign the undrafted Texas Tech quarterback who leads the nation in passing yards? Is he as good as the guy who was drafted #1? There has to be other means of attaining a high star rating, but they should be used sparingly. Stars should be hard won through results. An undrafted All-American who started for 4 years should get that fifth star. That guy who started three years in our system and had success in it because he was a great system fit might end up being a high 3 / low 4 star simply because he would not have made such big controbutions elsewhere.

There are key words that the ESPN pole uses that I find helpful here:

5 star = "elite"

Should be reserved for the very best athletes in the nation only. It should be tough to earn that fifth star and when you are done there should only be about 25-30 of these guys nationwide.

4 star = "significant imact"

There might be a few undrafted system guys who earn that fourth star simply because of the huge impact they had on their team. Think a Mike Hart type of player who does not get drafted. Short of that type of controbution, they should remain a three star athlete.

3 stars = "solid"

Basically everyone else and most of the system guys. It is where they are now on the intake side and will likely be where they will be post factum. This is why winning football games should still be the most important metric of a coach's success or failure.