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Basketball rankings are much, much more accurate thanks largely to AAU ball. There was a tournament earlier this year where three or four 5* centers played against each other over the course of one weekend. There's no comparable opportunity for football analysts.

But, Joker needs more time.

Sorry to bore a lot of you but I think it is interesting, lots of freak talent teams in the SEC have to face, hopefully UK will join the conference. You might want to skip my following posts if so.

I think UK's coaches do a great job finding AND coachinp up overlooked talent to be able to ever win a game in the SEC, last year the six SEC teams they played (sans Vandy) AVERAGED 39 four star commits in the previous four years while UK had two JC four stars contributing. UK has put about a dozen TWO stars in the NFL in the last few years, with a lot more having shots at it. I think a good three star should go to UK if they want any shot, Goode was UK's last 4* commit from another SEC state (NONE this century) and he spent three years behind a Heisman and five stars at Bama before giving up. He could have starred at UK like 5.2 Locke did. I'd rather play than sit the bench, NCs be damned. UK legacy recruit Robey (Rick from BB) still third string at Florida, probably gone this year.

It would be interesting to study the outcome of players based on their recruiting ranking. You could grade outcome on a scale such as benchwarmer, sometimes starter, full time starter, all conference, all america. Based on watching how Gator recruits play I suspect it would show that 5 star players are only slightly more likely to have success than 3 star players.

Are the recruiting services basing their ratings on what coaches say about players? There would be huge bias. A high school coach would overrate his players because he would want his kids to get as many scholarship offers as they could.

Why would a college recruiter give an accurate ranking to a recruiting service? If I were a recruiter I'd underrate the recruits I liked so that other teams wouldn't notice them.

Are the recruiting services looking at film? I've looked at some of the highlight films showing a prize recruit flattening an opponent who is half their size. I don't see how that tells you anything about how that player will perform against good athletes in college.

If you go back and look at the Louisville players who played under Petrino, they were 97% 2 and 3 stars. Yet Louisville put more players in the NFL during Petrino's 4 years than any SEC school in the same time frame. Maybe that's why a guy like Petrino makes nearly $4MM per year and guys at Rivals are making 5 figures. Rivals/Scout star rankings are worse than preseason rankings.

They had 8 players from Texas committed but lost Germain Ifedi a 3 star recruit from Houston to Texas A&M with-in the last week.. With Missouri not going to be going into Texas as much it might cost them a few this year. . Also the number 1 player in the country according to Rivals hasn't committed yet and he's a WR from Springfield Missouri named Dorial Green-Beckham . Hopefully they can keep him in-state and that would improve the class some but I think we will see more movement maybe after everything is settled down.

But if you look at the stars on Arkansas's past 2 teams, you'll find that most of them were ranked high coming out of high school. Everyone assumes that Arkansas has never recruited well, but they started more 4-5 star players then Oregon did last year, so that's not entirely true. The past 2-3 classes have lacked that star talent, however.

Finally, I can't talk about recruiting without saying that people put too much value in player ratings. Even if you disagree, you have to acknowledge that one service isn't the end-all, be-all of recruiting.

Good catch. I'd typed a 9 when I meant to type a 0. Nine 4-stars and Ten 3-stars for Alabama.

John

Agreed. Star rankings aren't scientific. There's now way to know who'll develop and who won't. However, it's the only thing we have to go by right now and — year-in and year-out — the teams that sign more 4- and 5-star players have a better chance of finding some diamonds.

Thanks for reading,
John

But also… take these statistics with a little grain of salt because Iowa State technically has the biggest overall score at 27.00 within the Big12… and we've seen what kind of team they've put on the field the past 8 years.

SEC Recruiting Numbers 2002 – 2010
Teams Conf. 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Total Average
Auburn SEC 31 27 29 22 25 30 29 28 32 253 28.11
Miss. State SEC 30 28 23 29 24 33 27 27 26 247 27.44
South Carolina SEC 27 28 29 28 24 31 23 29 23 242 26.89
Arkansas SEC 23 25 32 24 26 27 26 31 25 239 26.56
Ole Miss SEC 18 21 25 28 30 22 31 37 25 237 26.33
Alabama SEC 19 19 29 32 23 25 32 27 29 235 26.11
Kentucky SEC 15 22 28 26 31 29 20 29 26 226 25.11
LSU SEC 26 28 26 13 26 26 26 24 29 224 24.89
Tennessee SEC 25 22 24 26 22 32 18 22 25 216 24.00
Florida SEC 23 26 23 18 27 27 22 17 27 210 23.33
Georgia SEC 31 25 20 17 28 23 24 20 19 207 23.00
Vanderbilt SEC 22 22 20 25 25 14 21 18 24 191 21.22

Also, some of these ratings are biased in that if an LSU, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, and some others choose a player, his rating has a tendency to go up because they chose him. Remember these are adjusted all the way through football season. Some athletes don't have film available and are not rated at all. There's always a few sleepers out there.

Some programs do the most with the least and some do the least with the most. (Most and least being defined by star rating rather than reality)

Who want's to go over to Rivals, add it all up, and prove me wrong?