Thought this was interesting from coachingsearch.com. Seems this is what CBB has been saying all along:
Nebraska wide receivers coach Keith Williams shared some thoughts on the recruiting stat system in a series of tweets.
“It’s wild how the star system has magically taken over recruiting,” he wrote. “I know it’s just a way to evaluate, but it’s turned into the kid’s identity. A kid can’t even be talked about in an article or conversation without his star being known first to set the level of what is said next.
“I’m not even necessarily trying to make a point – I’m a hostage of it too to some degree, I have to admit – it’s just fascinating to me. I don’t blame the recruiting services at all. We’ve all done this to ourselves. Coaches (me included), parents, and the general public have turned a simple evaluation method into premature validation and football voodoo. I was reading an article, and the writer didn’t describe 1 kid without mentioning his stars first. What’s worse is that I’m glad he did.”
Our own University uses the ranking system in the media guide bio. It has been for a long time.
It can be used as a marketing tool, our coaches would use it if we signed a Top 15 class, the athletic dept would use it, the media guide would use it etc. etc. etc.
Sometimes videos fool you.
I can remember watching Broderick Green’s video and thinking this guy is unreal. Didn’t think anyone was going to be able to tackle this guy.
Problem is, the competition was pathetic.
It was highlights of him trucking a bunch of guys half his size and half his speed.
They can be very deceiving. Sometimes it’s hard to really judge a kid on highlights.
The reason everyone looks at STARS is because, FOR THE MOST PART (of course there are exceptions), they are accurate.
Bama has the BEST star rated classes and they are again playing for the NC. I don’t get the article…YES, we go by STARS cause STARS (like size, LOL) matter!
When Bobby Bowden spoke at the LR Touchdown Club several years ago, he spoke about recruiting and how it led partly to his demise because he and his staff starting chasing stars instead of relying purely on their own evaluations. He said it can make a recruiter somewhat lazy.
For me, the “who’s offered” list is a much better indicator of talent. And, I believe that most recruiting services, when they do a star update, base their upward moves on “who’s offered”. They would be crazy not to. If you’ve hired a new recruit evaluator for $40,000 and he brought you an initial 3-star rating for a kid that was subsequently offered by Bama, LSU, OH St, Mich, USC, etc. you’d be crazy not to bump him.
In other words, the winningest coaches actually participate in the “star system” as the recruiting services do their “updates”. That’s the reason the “star system” seems to usually mirror winning teams.
i agree with this to a certain extent. But how do you know if they have a legit offer? Bama offers alot of kids, but will only take a select group of kids. Hard to determine if the kids has a legit commitable offer from a school.
Stars…waaay overrated. What’s wrong with Tennessee’s stars? Or Georgia’s? Notre Dame’s stars weren’t working this year or last. Hogs are on the outside looking in, always have been. But so are most other schools. Evaluating, development, and coaching of the 3 stars is the deal.
I always get a kick out of the recruitnicks and the star system. For every team’s performance that correlates closely to their recruiting rankings, you can find 3 that don’t. I read somewhere that regardless of talent year to year, Scout rates 50 players as 5 star recruits each year. So player #51 is a 4 star player, whether he is better than 10 or 20 of the 5 stars the year before or not.
I’ve got an idea, start a website that ranks the recruiting services. Go back over the last 10 years or so, and look at each kid a recruiting service ranked vs. how the kid played over his career. put together a scoring system that grades production vs. number of stars, then total the scores and rank each service from year to year. Or even better, if you can tell who does the evaluations for each service, you could even grade the individuals and rank them. That way, when you see an article that says someone is rated a 4 star recruit by XYZ, you could go look at XYZ’s ratings and see if that means anything or not.
Of course the star system has some (a lot) of validity. But one thing I THINK it does (subject to correction) is it can exacerbate the differences between players. I use analogies a lot, lets use one on GPA. If two people have all the same classes, and one makes 89% in each class, and one makes 90% in each class (assuming 90% is an “A” and 89% is a “B”) 3.0 GPA and the other has a 4.0 GPA while in fact, the first one only did slightly better. Better? YES. As much as it looks? NO.
If say (and I don’t know the numbers), a service gives out 30 “5 Star” ratings and the next 100 kids are 4 stars, and the next 300 are 3 stars, there is very little difference between the bottom ones in one category and top of the next, but since you really only have 3 categories, it makes the difference look bigger.
All that said, you give me recruiting classes year after year of 20 five stars, and you take year after year of mostly 3 stars, and I will win on the field most of the time. Will some of my 5 stars bomb? Yep. Will some of your 3 stars become supper players? Yep.
Appropriate analogy. One thing ESPN does that I like is they give kids a 1-100 rating. It takes a 90 to make 5-star right now (there are only 11), and an 80 to make the ESPN 300 list. Montaric Brown and Daulton Hyatt are both rated at 82. Tedarrell Slaton, OT from Florida who is still listing us, is an 85. Agim last year got an 89, which was top 4-star (only 9 5-stars on that list). Obviously Agim was darn close to a 5-star and Brown, not very close.
Speaking of 4-stars from last year, I just noticed Kristian Fulton, the DB from New Orleans that we lost to LSU, and looked up what he did. He only played in three games this season and made two tackles. Dunno if that was injury or just couldn’t get into the rotation. Bet he would have played a lot more here if healthy.
Oh, one more thing. Lamar Jackson was a 79 in 2015. All he did is win the Heisman. Deshaun Watson got 88. Jalen Hurts got an 80.