Stars matter per Dr. Saturday
"It's a simple equation: The better your recruiting rankings by the gurus, the better your chances of winning games, against all classes. Emphasis on the word chances – the counterexamples are obvious and legion in both directions. But as far as forming a reasonable basis for predictions, well, it probably goes without saying that you never want to count on being one of the anomalies."
January 26th, 2011 at 4:15 PM ^
January 26th, 2011 at 4:36 PM ^
Agreed. While obviously there is some correlation, I don't watch the UConn/ND replays and think, "Oh man, Denard is only a 4* Cornerback prospect."
January 26th, 2011 at 5:00 PM ^
First of all Dr.Saturday does not equal "recruiting sites." Secondly, " a 4* prospect" equates to a potential all-BCS conference player in the opinion of Rivals. That is what Denard is. EVERY look at this question has consistently turned up the same thing: it is better for the team you root for that its class get ranked higher than not. There is not "some correlation," there is correlation. There are several other looks at this that have been on this site, search for them if that portion is still functional. No one denies there are tons of examples of lower ranked players succeeding, and vice versa. Ratings are not causation--but in terms of probability they are a legitimate factor in chances of team success. The data is in and it is not really debatable any longer. Recruiting ratings matter, period.
January 26th, 2011 at 5:25 PM ^
Yes there is a correlation, I said there was. I don't know how strong it is, so I said some as a qualifier. My point was that Denard wasn't ranked as a QB prospect to my knowledge, and that it doesn't matter relative to performance.
I would absolutely take a 5* over a 3* all other things being equal, but my point is that once they put on a college jersey it's all about college. There are many more factors at play for an NCAA athlete than recruiting rankings.
January 26th, 2011 at 5:29 PM ^
January 26th, 2011 at 11:22 PM ^
I was emailing back and fourth today with Angelique Chengalis from the Detroit News and she said that she was talking with Tom Lemming and he said that one of the recruits this year popped up to a 4* rating after he was recruited by UM. Suggesting that his mere recruitment by UM meant that his rating must be too low. Seemed kind of odd to me. I've never seen or heard of this happening before.
January 26th, 2011 at 5:29 PM ^
You said, "First of all Dr.Saturday does not equal "recruiting sites." "
January 27th, 2011 at 12:43 AM ^
If you look up Dr Saturday's old posts when he was SMQ, you'll see he's been posting this for years, not just since Yahoo bought him.
January 26th, 2011 at 11:54 PM ^
Hinton used aggregates of team recruiting over 5 years (2006-2010). He's not talking about how good one individual 2 star or 5 player is. Pointing to Denard or Mike Hart is the equivalent of disputing global warming on the basis of what the temperature is on one particular day in your home town.
Check out his chart, which I can't seem to insert or hyperlink: http://bit.ly/f2OWv1.
January 26th, 2011 at 5:04 PM ^
The article was written by Dr Saturday, not Rivals/Scout. It's obvious that the best players in high school are better than others, so it stands to reason that the school who gets the most awesome players will win more.
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I FIGURED OUT HOW TO POST OMG!!!!!!!
I'm using IE at work, and couldn't post because there wasn't a text box, just a subject box. I really wanted to reply to the above comment, so I wrote a Twitter-like reply in the subject box. Once it posted, I tried to click edit and it worked!
January 27th, 2011 at 6:36 AM ^
I also agree with this...Not that the point Im going to make here means anything when it comes to college football, but there is only 1 5 star recruit in the superbowl this year...Woodley....
January 26th, 2011 at 4:28 PM ^
Seems to me that there isn't that big of a difference between 3 and 4 star teams. The way I'm reading that is that you want to have at least an average three star class to be succesful in college football and you want to have a 4-5 star class to be elite. Not really groundbreaking stuff.
January 26th, 2011 at 4:37 PM ^
If I went out and watched every single high school player in america, and ranked them on a highly subjective and unjustified scale from 1 to 5 based on how good I thought they were, and then I made new teams out of them, putting the best players (in my estimation) together, gave the highest rated teams the best facilities and paid the best coaches I could find to coach them, which teams do you think would win the most games?
(Holy huge sentence batman.)
I know next to nothing about evaluating talent, but I'd be willing to best there would be a correlation between the average rankings of the players on each team and their success.
January 26th, 2011 at 4:57 PM ^
I know next to nothing about evaluating talent, but I'd be willing to best there would be a correlation between the average rankings of the players on each team and their success.
You would never know it by the number of "Recruiting rankings don't matter! Mike Hart was a 3-star!" posts around here (and every other college football message board in history)
January 26th, 2011 at 4:52 PM ^
January 26th, 2011 at 7:04 PM ^
Consider the fact that recruiting sites haven't existed that long. Back then, coaches would analyze a lot more of players film (if it existed) or frequently visit their HS games. I trust that this staff still has that same ability to determine quality recruits like they did in the mid-90s, and build them up into a defensive juggernaut once again. I will say that the longevity in the existence of these recruiting sites makes them more and more accurate because now we're getting scouting reports from 3 (or more) different evaluations, with film even being uploaded by the players or HS coaches themselves. While they may not always agree, they tend to hit the 5 star and high 4 star players pretty dead on. The 2012 class will prove to be a mighty intriguing one, especially seeing what Mattison can do given a large timetable.
January 26th, 2011 at 7:07 PM ^
January 26th, 2011 at 11:06 PM ^
I hold stars in the same part of my brain that I hold the U.S. News and World Report rankings. They're important, but they're really more about presenting the "image" of the program favorably. If you're Alabama or Texas and you pull in 2-3 5* a year, that looks very good on your resume to recruits. If you're Minnesota and you have a roster of 2*, then it's not as good.
On a side note, this new formatting sure is funky. First time I've been able to log on in a few days.
January 27th, 2011 at 8:30 AM ^
Bring me more stars, so long as they are tough stars.
January 27th, 2011 at 9:44 AM ^
that people keep arguing against clear and convincing evidence. It really is remarkable. And we are supposed to be a 'smart' fan base. Well hey look at this anomaly or that anomaly, so that must mean that this anomaly is always correct. What do you people do for a living, run the federal government?
January 27th, 2011 at 10:28 AM ^