For the third time. Hopefully The Smiling Assassin gets in this time.
Steve Atwater and Cliff Harris, two of the best safeties ever to play the game. Two that the state of Arkansas certainly can be proud of. Wonder how many stars did they have coming out of high school?
I hope he makes it in this time. He certainly deserves it.
They weren’t doing star ratings yet, which is a good thing. Atwater was an option QB at Lutheran North HS in St. Louis, converted to defense after Ken Hatfield signed him as a Hog in 1984.
Harris wasn’t recruited by anyone out of Des Arc. And I mean ANYONE. His dad, who played football at Ouachita himself, convinced OBU coach Buddy Benson to give him a scholarship. Wasn’t drafted either; Cowboys signed him as a free agent after the 1970 NFL draft.
That was my point: star ratings are often overrated. Someone figured out a way to make money off the star ratings that’s why they exist today.
You won’t get any argument from me. I’ve been making fun of stargazers for years.
People like Max Emfinger started doing player ratings in the early 80s and discovered people (and coaches) were crazy enough to pay for what they wrote. But Max didn’t develop the 5-star system. Somebody else did that. My guess is it probably came from Rivals, which started in 1998.
Somebody actually did a scholarly paper on the correlation between recruit ratings and recruit performance as measured by how they did in the NFL. His conclusion: Essentially no connection between stars and pro performance. Here it is if you want to read it and look at his methodology.
Where did his son end up going?
NM, running back at Princeton.