Thanks for doing this. I have had the exact same thought about averaging the services, but never followed through. I definitely agree, ESPN can be left out, for a number of reasons. They are eccentric, to say the least. You've given me some interesting reading here . . . 

Nice work, now lets assign 5-star status to the top 20 or so for now for a 'universal 5 star' 

For someone who just starting following recruiting this really makes sense. Leaving out ESPN seems better since the other sites go more in-depth with the numbers (amount of players). I wish there was a way to include the watch list for ESPN since they had more players to add to the list. Not sure how many players were on that list but maybe all those players would get a standard 100 score so the total group could be more inclusive of the Rivals Scout & 247 players.

This should go under 'useful stuff' if you ask me.

I'd revise the methodology to give an unranked guy a rank of, say, 350.  That way it wouldn't be a total veto if 3 of the 4 sites love a guy.

Another thing worth doing would be giving an average star ranking (e.g., 3.25)

Pretty damn sweet.  Michigan isn't doing too bad by this metric.

I also like the idea of giving a player unranked on one site or another a ranking of 350 for that site.  This would give a clearer picture of the apparent value of a team's class as a whole.

from the computer scores in the BCS.  Choose a certain threshold for how many players get ranked and counted (in BCS, it's the top 25 per poll) - for this, perhaps top 150, or if you can order the ESPN data, top 200 maybe.  Then assign values such that the #1 person in each service gets max points (150 or 200 or whatever you pick), #2 gets max minus 1, etc.  Then average the 4 scores and divide by max points (this gives a value from 0 to 1, a percent).  Highest average value is at the top of the list.  Sort by average, then rank from 1 to how ever many unique players there are across the services.  This way, all players can be included, they'll just have a value of 0 from one or more services, which will drag down their average but not keep them out of the list entirely.

As noted, don't copy the BCS where the lowest and highest are dropped out as there aren't enough data sources to do that.

BTW, a bit OT, but here's where the computers and BCS put Michigan last year (took a lot a manual data entry to dig up these lower-than-top-25-places):

week-computers-BCS

8 (after Iowa loss): 28(1 pt, dropped, so 0) 31

9 (after bye week): 28(0 pts) 26

10 (after Penn State loss): 28(0 pts) 36

11 (after Illinois win): 29(0 pts) 32

12 (after Purdue win): 29(1 pt, dropped, so 0) 27

13 (after Wisconsin loss): 29(0 pts) 45

14 (after OSU loss): gone from BCS ranking

15 (bye): still gone (duh)

At risk of sounding dumb.........won't that method give the exact same ranks though just in percentage form?

I guess a percentage could be pleasing to the senses for some but personally I like it better seeing the average rank between the four sites.

Edit: I forgot to say thank you turd ferguson for your delightful post and your hilarious name.

somebody did this, we've all been chasing recruit numbers from the 4 sites for months now. Whether you drop the outlier high score or outlier low score I'm glad you did this. If you have the time try running both sets vetoing high and low to see if it makes much of a difference. This is something I'd think ESPN would be doing if they weren't too busy screwing up the averages even more with their own ratings.