Bitching about recruiting rankings

With all this talk about X sites maybe this should have been labeled NSFW???

News at 11.  

On a slightly more serious note, I'm not sure offer lists mean nearly as much as they used to.  An increasing number of out-of-region offers seem to be expressions of interest rather than real offers.    

Bitching - bad

Bitching about bitching - worse

Since this post is about rising levels of bitching and I've always enjoyed bitching and my nominal amount of bitching hasn't risen, am I allowed to maintain current levels of bitching?

/cause that's what people do in recruiting threads...

The thing about rankings is that sites will all be proven right or wrong in a few years.  You can say all you want about the ratings right now, but the only thing that really matters is how the kids play on the field.

When following recruiting you have to remember one thing; its for profit hence anything the services say is meant to get clicks, the more outlandish the better.

This is why in my own personal ranking system I go with the consensus star ranking (gets rid of that outlier) and how well they fit our(any) system.  We need 6'5 recievers who are often a little bit slower than midget burners, however the "rankings" will say he's a "terrible" player because he cant run with the best of them so he only gets 3stars where as a 5'10 kid is the greatest thing since sliced bread.   

Magnus has zero experience evaluating football talent as well. Seriously.

In reality, who even cares about star rankings? Sure, they're good for national perception and all, but if the coaches think somebody is good enough to offer, then who cares what his star rating is? If he ends up being a contributor on the field (meaning more wins, fewer losses) then that will boost our national perception more than star ratings will.

If you find yourself bitching about people discussing college football-related topics on a college football message board, stop. It's embarrassing.

So why is Gareon Conley not ranked 4* on Rivals yet?

hah

The complaining will not stop, and in some ways it is justified. Recruiting rankings are designed to attract fan attention, but the rankings are not tailored to specific fits for specific teams. There will always be a discrepancy here (though occasionally in "class rankings" fits are considered). A lot of the sentiment you're attacking is concerned with this discrepancy. Imagine if Brionte Dunn committed to Penn State instead of Ohio State. The folks at Rivals might know that this move makes him slightly more likely to make the NFL (because of the fit/exposure, perhaps), but they cannot possibly change the rankings after he commits to Penn State (so we assume). All too often someone makes a post proclaiming that fandom is unnecessary. As others have pointed out, this is self defeating. 

I'm sure the coaches could care less about a recruits rankings which is how it should be.  Rankings and stars are for fans.  Otherwise what the hell are we gonna argue or complain about for the six months of the year our guys aren't playing football?

If I hadn't seem some of the low-ranked comments you're talking about I'd say you were going all straw man. Still, that's a small percentage of people who get excited about our recruits and get frustrated when experts aren't sharing the same excitement.

Remember no matter where any of these guys rank according to whatever site -- including this one -- it won't have any tangible effect on how the player performs for Michigan.

Anyway, a lot of the so-called complainers I think do have a specific beef specifically with regard to Rivals.com because they don't have a Midwest recruiting analyst and that means a lack of information from one of the leading recruiting sites about our core stomping grounds. Even more specifically, the way they handled Deveon Smith is kind of embarrassing. Here's a player who has been covered by Duane Long and lots of other people who know Ohio recruiting. He shouldn' t be a mystery. Yet he has been to Rivals, whose public analysis of this particular recruit essentially boils down to "who's that guy who committed to Michigan? Oh he's a 4-star to Scout. Oh he has an offer from Ohio State as well as Michigan. Okay, let's give him a 3-star."

If anybody is complaining that Shane Morris is ranked too low, you can punch them -- he has been scouted to a T for several years by everybody and he's sitting comfortably in the spot you would expcet him to: 2nd overall pocket passer, in range of what typically ends up 5-star.

If anyone has some factual info as to how the 4 main recruiting ranking sites make money (besides the obvious sources of subscriptions and ads), please let us all know. Do they also market individual consulting services to colleges? Do they suffer any direct economic harm when their predictions go horribly wrong? Do they receive preferential access over other media competition?