Football #17 on Rivals now.

Don't much care about Sparty. #17 to Rivals is not so good...#9 to Scout is better. Imagine how recruiting is going to go when we post a winning record?

Boisture still being rated a four-star is far more curious to me. Magnus' post about the ratings being based on NFL potential make sense, but it's not like Boisture played all that well this season. Maybe they think he is as classy as his grandfather.

Not to pile on, but State also has a higher star average to Rivals FWIW. Actually we're 30th in star average right now according to them, and 14th to Scout.

Looks like we have a solid class that will give us good defensive depth. I'm not too worried about the Rivals rating. If we had just 3 more 4 stars, then we would be in the top 10 on Rivals. May be Parker will sign up with us!

We have a class with lots of potential, no five stars on Rivals and relatively few four stars. If properly coached, assuming this class avoids academic and other issues, it could be a very good group in a couple of years. Many of the rankings seem to be just on the cusp of being one star higher or are higher, depending upon the ranking service. I looked at Rivals' data from 2002 to date. Wiscy was never on the list of top 25 programs and Iowa only showed up once. Boise State and Cincy were never on the list. It is about coaching and the system being in place long enough for players to learn the schemes.

It brings much needed depth. Additionally, there are plenty of guys that appear to be underrated based upon their ceiling. For example, Furman. People speak about him as a potential NFL prospect but he is a 3-star. I do believe many of these prospects will be stars and the actual class rating will be proved to be very underrated.

We've endured two straight losing seasons and our recruiting ranking has only sunk to #17 on Rivals and we're still Top 10 on Scout? There aren't too many programs out there that could pull off that kind of performance. Imagine what is going to happen when we start winning? It's going to be fun.

I think that's almost more critical than the team ranking. The team ranking takes quality and quantity into account, but clearly its tougher to recruit quality than it is to recruit quantity. And our quality has taken a noticeable hit, by past UM standards. This will become a very important metric next year. We have around 15 scholarships to give out next year, so our quality will have to improve significantly, or we won't even be ranked anymore. Take the quality of this year's class with the quantity that we'll necessarily be limited to next year, and you have the makings for an unranked class. (I'm not sure what the Rivals Points calculation is, but if we prorate our current points by 15/26, that would put us around #42. Anyone have more insight into the calculation?)

It makes me recall all those not so highly regarded Nebraska classes that went on to glory back in the 80's...

of hooey. I have said this before, but I think it should be repeated. If the Scout/Rivals service scouts were good enough to actually evaluate talent, they would work for a scouting department of a university and get paid actual money. They out hussle many universities, and have tons of information out there to choose from. However, Miami fans can tell you about using the scouting "services" to put your board together. They used them exclusively for 5 years, stopped using their own scouts, and their talent went down the toilet. Real teams do their own research, and look for guys to fit their system. This stuff is for fans to be able to brag about, and that's about it. Think about how the NFL scouts miss on multiple picks every year. Now try to imagine some staff guy on one of these sites' payroll of cheesepuffs and sandwiches trying to pick out the diamonds in the rough. hooey. RR and the Michigan staff know who they want and how they fit into the master plan. Go Blue!

There are some interesting articles over at CFN looking back at the 2006 recruiting class, both in terms of 5-stars who made it—or not—and the unheralded 2-stars who became studs by their senior years. No, I'm NOT saying that we don't want 5-star guys, but the percentage of the 5-stars in 2006 who were complete and total busts is pretty amazing. That's why I don't get too concerned about a lack of them in this class. http://cfn.scout.com/2/940369.html

Look at the Golden Golphers, they go to a bowl game, look to be on the rise, and suffer a huge amount of decommits. We were 5 and 7 last year, coming off a 3 and 9 season, but still have a recruiting class ranked in the top 10 on Scout. All in all, not that bad considering where we could be. Testimony to the coaching staff's ability to get the recruits to look forward to better days ahead. Go Blue!

These rankings are just one indicator of success. We've seen plenty of highly rated players fail and poorly rated players succeed. For those who do put a lot of stock in player rating services, consider how Michigan has fared in the Big Ten the past two seasons. In 2009, we lost to MSU, Iowa, Illinois, Purdue, PSU, Wisky, and OSU. Of those teams, none were rated higher by Rivals in 2007, one (OSU) was rated higher in 2008, and one (OSU) was rated higher in 2009. In this years rankings, only Penn St. is ranked higher in the Big Ten. So, for the past 4 recruiting classes, Rivals has rated Michigan at least second in the conference every year. By quality of players coming in (per Rivals), Michigan should be at the top of the conference. At the very least, we should finish behind OSU and PSU and play on NYD every year. These awful seasons can be chalked up to system and coaching. Period. Recruiting just doesn't seem to be the problem anymore.

Has UofM as #9...so FU Rivals

I really don't care where the team is ranked by a bunch of recruiting services; what we should care about is how this class (and the ones before it) perform this year. Let others care about the 5th best LB in America and how he'll play at PSU, but I'll worry about how our LBs play this season.

We might be seeing the hugely negative effects of two losing seasons. The blue-chippers who want to compete for a national championship dropped Michigan from consideration. Add one or two of those guys to this class and it's a very good, if not a great one. As it stands now, I don't think that what we are seeing is a case of Rodriguez finding lots of guys that were overlooked by all of the recruiting services. I think that we are recruiting some "Plan B" guys after having failed to land guys like Shariff Floyd and Seantrel Henderson. I lot of people have pointed out that we should trust the talent evaluation of coaches more than that of recruiting services, but a lot of our lower ranked guys weren't offered by the big schools like Penn State and Ohio State. I trust their talent evaluation as much as I trust Rodriguez's. The offer list for most of our recruits is congruent with their star rankings. That is why I think we need to be realistic about the caliber of this class. Fans of every school like to think that their class is underrated and that their coaches got the targets that they really wanted, and that's all that matters. I have lost track of the number of times I have heard Michigan State fans say this exact same thing. We are now hearing Michigan fans say this.

Rivals still has Drake listed as commited. Scout does not. I think it's common knowledge at this point that Drake will not be in the 2010 class.

Four stars from 2002 include: Carl Tabb, Pierre Rembert, Mike Kolodziej, Larry Harrison, Darnell Hood. Three stars include: Rondell Biggs, David Harris, Rueben Riley. Four stars from 2004 include: Doug Dutch, Brett Gallimore, Max Martin, Chris Rogers. Three stars include: Jamar Adams, MIKE HART, John Thompson. (There were only a couple three stars in the 2003 class, so hard to do a comparison.) But it goes on. Kevin Grady was a five star; so was Kelly Baraka. It isn't a science. There were plenty of good four stars in those classes, and plenty of washouts; ditto three stars.