Kinda OT: Rivals Rankings, Boisture, and MSU
In the Rivals100 mailbag Q&A a fan of little brother complains that players who commit to MSU generally fall (or don't rise) in the rivals rankings. He cites both Edwin Baker and Joe Boisture as examples.
My own epinion is that Baker ended just about where he deserved to be, and that Boisture had been overrated for a while. That being said, the current rash of Michigan commits who seem to be locked into their ranking has me thinking that just maybe there might be something to this gripe.
Crabtree from Rivals adamantly denies that a prospects ranking is affected by what school he commits to, but do we believe him? Does this fan have a real gripe, or should we just chalk this up to a general bias against players who have already committed? A bias against player from the state of Michigan? Or is this just another moist MSU fan whining about conspiracy theories and a national indifference to his university?
http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=967128
Of course they punish them in rankings when they commit early. It's a business where they need to sell subscriptions.
I'm not sure who it was, but they said Mike Farrel, national recruiting analyst, is a Boston College fan. So Boisture gets hurt by him.
According to the Elite 11 reports Boisture isn't doing very well at all and Devin Gardner is doing very well.
I think everyone thinks this because it's true: high-rated committed players tend to fall.
But I also think high-rated uncommitted players tend to fall. Every year there's a lot of guys who haven't got the early pub yet and move up a la Taylor Lewan, and when you get enough of those guys the overall trend for folks who aren't at the tippy top of the ratings is for everyone to slide as the new finds are slotted in. If you haven't changed anyone's opinion about you since the last ratings change, you should *expect* to slide.
to this specific case: Baker was hurt most of his senior year and got the slide effect tons, and Boisture's proving he's overrated right now at the Elite 11.
Yes to the business angle. For instance, no way TP would've been so highly ranked if he had committed early.
Wasn't Pryor #1 from wire to wire? He was #1 on their very first top 100, IIRC.
Yes, and if IIRC last year when they switched the #1 player from Matt Barkley to Rueben Randle Rivals said it was the first time they'd ever made that change.
To be clear, I'm not sure if that meant that was the first time they changed the #1 at all, or that late in the recruiting cycle.
I'm still upset that Jeremy Jackson can have offers from Florida, Texas, and LSU, but not even make the top 250. Worse than that he is unranked at his position. Now that is bullshit.
Or how Tony Grimes has offers from Alabama, Georgia, Miami, Michigan, Ole Miss, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, T-Tech, and more; and is only a 3-star?
A lot of times these rankings don't make sense. I'm at peace with it.
Those offers have been called into question, FWIW. And there's no way he had one from Texas.
he should have posted them on his interwebs site ala the Force.
Weren't some people questioning Hankins' offer list after his showing at camp? How often do recruits claim an offer from a school that hasn't actually offered, and does Rivals just go off of what recruits claim without even looking into it? I guess that's how things like this end up happening:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR20080…
I'm surprised this is an issue with a kid whose dad is a coach on a major college team.
Well, he may have had one of those "hey kid, we like your film and would love to see more of you in person" type of offers, but there's no way he had a legitimate written offer, since Texas doesn't offer those until their Junior Day in March.
I've been a little suspicious of Jeremy Jackson too. His early offers just didn't seem to mesh with his rankings and the tape.
Anywho...here's to hoping he's the next Braylon (or even Avant)
Joooordan?
I was thinking the same thing...
He sure was a popular fellow.
Anyone else ignore rankings and stars and just look at offers? Try it. It's good for you. Also bad for gurus.
As was discussed above, sometimes offers are totally bogus. We all know Texas never offered Jeremy Jackson (unless it was as a favor to Fred, I guess)
How did we go from "called into question" to "totally bogus"? Even if his offers have been exaggerated, how much does that happen compared to players being arbitrarily ranked and re-ranked?
some guys just don't get the pub till late and, like Brian said, if they don't continue to impress, have to move down a bit.
unless you want 125 guys in the Rivals 100.
so, it's not that they slide down b/c they are committed to a specific school (MSU) or even that they are committed. it's that, if you're already committed at this point, you're a guy who got a ton of early attention from 10th/11th grade. again, as more kids get evaluated, some will we slotted high causing these early attn. guys to fall down.
however in some cases, it may be b/c they are committed and no longer feel the need to attend big time camps, etc.
I don't think my argument applies to Boisture, who has a wonderful attitude BTW. I'm sure there's an element of objective evaluation done by the services but it's clearly tainted by guru biases (um Lemming/ND) and how much a player is willing to play the system. I'm a lot more interested in who reports on August 9th and how they do after that.
For one thing, I never said all of Jackson's offers were bogus, just the Texas one. What I said was a lot of kids claim offers that don't exist. I think it happens a lot, too. Last year a kid committed to Cal without having an offer.
I would say that both DG and Boisture are heads and shoulders above Bolden. DG is raw but has huge upside. From what I've read and watched a couple clips from camp, his mechanics has vastly improved. Boisture may not pass the look test but he has impressed me when I watched him in games. Bolden is a combine workout warrior. Looks good in shorts but in pads, he fail to impress me once.
is when the evaluations and the rankings don't match up, specifically in regards to the QBs from Michigan. All this week the Rivals guys have been working the Gardner-Pryor comparison and talking about how similar they were at this point in their development, yet one was the #1 overall recruit and the other barely cracks the top 200.
Or how they talk about how well Gardner and Bolden have performed all summer and say its a coin flip as to which one would be more perfect for building a team around, but still keep Boisture ranked higher than either of them.
and with a player like Marvin Robinson, they have concerns about him at safety, think he'll be a linebacker, list him at LB but evaluate him at safety. if there is such indecision about his future position why not rate him as an ATH and give us a truer picture of where he fits in?
Whether Courtney Avery is the highest 3 star or lowest 4 star doesn't really bother me. but the inconsistency irks me just a little.
Agree completely.
what bothers me most and i know ESPN rankings don't get talked about much, but last year they evaluated big will as an OT even though everyone involved knew he was got play on the DL. it almost seems that the arrogance of the evaluaters is such that "i jnow best where to play your players not you" hence the crazy difference in positions each recruit is rank at what position from each website.
But to credit ESPN a little, analysts on Rivals and Scout said that Big Will has very intriguing potential as an OT. He played some OT in the AAA game, IIRC. Big Will also played OT in high school. So it's not like ESPN is coming out of left field here with their evaluation. Regardless, due to depth issues, Big Will will be playing DT barring any other changes or situations.
Sam Webb himself said back in January that he believed Big Will had great potential as a left tackle.
that many were projecting higher upside / ceiling / any-other-appropriate-cliche on the OL than DL.
...but also Nick Hill seven spots higher than Austin White.
http://www.rivals.com/viewrank.asp?ra_key=2390
Rivals is clearly pro-MSU. This guy needs to stop whining.