Semi-OT(?)-Recruiting Rankings analysis

Submitted by maizenblue92 on

Caveat: This is done by a non-football site.

I came across this pretty interesting recruiting analysis by Buzzfeed.

The study emphasizes making the NFL. In particular I would like you to notice the first graph and the graph regarding TEs.

Schmozerine

March 17th, 2013 at 11:11 AM ^

I played TE in college for just one year because I was married and the scholarship was not enough for both of us to go to school and live. If I would have known there was that high of a percentage for TE's going to the League I may have taken out some school loans. Dang Man!!!

FreddieMercuryHayes

March 17th, 2013 at 11:20 AM ^

Good read, thanks for posting that.  I must say that I disagree with their initial working hypothesis though.  I don't believe that the recruiting services primary objective is to predict who makes it into the NFL.  I believe they are trying to predict success in college.  Now there is definate corelation between the two, and I'm sure pro-protential plays a part of evaluation, but it's also not the primary intent.  This could also explain partialy why they rank so many QBs, but so many don't make it into the NFL.  Because a 6'0" speedspeedster can be a successful QB in college, but not in the NFL.  So he may be ranked high by Rivals who seems him as deadly in a zone-read attack, even though his prospects in the NFL are limited. 

Secondly, I'm not sure how to correct for this, but they don't seem to take into accout positional switches.  The the 5 star DE bust thing.  I can think of two 5 star DEs that weren't even on the list and made it into the NFL: Lamarr Woodley and Brandon Grahmn.  The problem is that they played LB in high school, so were listed there even though most convential wisdom looked at both and said "duh, future DE".  There's a lot of positional switches made in college that might confound their results.