Ratings for recruits are guesswork
February 9th, 2008, 3:04 am Hobbies Ideas
Bronco Mendenhall pegged it pretty good this week. He’d get little argument from Utah’s Kyle Whittingham.
The advent of the “star” system by Internet recruiting services that hit more than a decade ago may have about as much value as a monkey pulling the right lever half the time.
Today and Sunday, we’ll use this space to break down the so-called experts and show just how valid their five-star, four-star and so-on rankings are of high school and junior college recruits.
The two main online recruiting sites are Rivals.com and Scout.com. They feature two so-called gurus and a system of telling fans and coaches just how good a recruit is. For all intents and purposes, it’s an attempt to milk a moving goat and if a college recruiter went only by their rankings, he might be looking for another job.
Last Wednesday, Mendenhall said he almost felt sorry for recruiting fans who race to their computers to see how many “stars” a high school recruit has by his name.
Mendenhall said of the 22 starters on his 2007 championship team, 14 didn’t have any stars by their names out of high school and the remaining eight averaged 2.5 stars yet his team went 11-2 and finished ranked No. 14.
Story continues below
“Before you get all caught up and going on the Internet and doing whatever you do, the idea (star ratings) simply means nothing. It means nothing. Find something else to do with your time, please.”
Whittingham echoed the sentiment, as a veteran recruiter.
“Recruiting isn’t an exact science, so I didn’t want to select anyone in particular from the class,” Whittingham told reporters this week.
“There is just no way to tell. If you go back, a lot of our guys who were ranked low or with just two stars were guys like Alex Smith, Steve Fifita and Eric Weddle. There are too many unknowns.”
Studies and results prove the two are correct.
Utah chased UCLA out of Rice-Eccles this past fall, even though the Bruins had a roster filled with significantly more players with four- and five-star ratings by their names. Ditto for BYU in wins over Arizona and the Bruins.
The Charleston Post and Courier sports section did an excellent study on Rivals.com and Scout.com this past week titled, “Grading the Graders.”
Bottom line to the study is these rating services are right about half the time.
“We’re evaluating kids based on a snapshot in time,” said Alle Wallace, a respected recruiting analyst. “It’s like gambling: Who are you going to put your money on?”
More accurately, paying for a subscription to one of these sites might be extremely entertaining and informative. The features and interviews by foot soldier reporters are great reading. But in projecting how good recruits are, it is gambling a chip on black or red on the roulette table.
The newspaper’s study found less than half of 50 teams ranked by The Associated Press Top 25 the past two seasons averaged a Top 25 recruiting ranking over the previous five years by Rivals.com and Scout.com.
In 2007, Rivals had BYU’s recruiting class ranked No. 74 and Scout had it 51. They finished ranked No. 14. The previous year, 2006, Rivals ranked BYU’s recruiting class 70.6 and Scout had it 51.8 and the Cougars finished ranked No. 16.
This week, Rivals ranked BYU’s recruiting class No. 83 and Utah 59th.Rivals.com had just 11 of the Top 25 averaging a recruiting class of 25th or better from 2003 to 2007. Scout.comdidn’t do any better, also missing on 14 teams. A year earlier, Rivals had 13 of the Top 25 finishers with a Top 25 class from 2002 to 2006. Scout had one fewer at 12.”
This is a combined success rate of 47 percent.
If the recruiting services had been right the past half-decade, Notre Dame would have won the national championship time and time again. Instead, the mighty four- and five-star-laden Fighting Irish lost to Air Force and Navy at home this past year and eked out three wins.
“I absolutely believe it’s an exact science and it has been from day one,” said the chief operating officer of Rivals, Bobby Burton.
Quoted in the Charleston report, he added, “At the end of the day, it’s opinion. You’re not always right and you’re not always wrong. We hit some and we miss some. It’s a barometer. It’s not an absolute.”
This is never more apparent than Florida State and Miami. These recruiting services have salivated over Seminole and Hurricane recruiting classes the past five years. FSU had three Top Five classes in the past four years, according to Rivals. “They barely sneaked into a bowl in 2006 and couldn’t finish better than fourth in their division in 2007,” noted the Charleston report.
The Hurricanes? Scout had their classes No. 14 or better each of the past five years but they finished 7-6 in 2006 and had a losing season in 2007, going 5-7.
Mendenhall said the reason the star system fails is because it fails to give as much weight to such key factors as character, intangibles in academics, performance as a teammate in an organized community, guts, attitude, teachability, personal integrity, and response to coaching all of which differ in every athlete.
Mendenhall told a gathering on signing day that the reason freshman Eathyn Manumaleuna blocked UCLA’s game-winning field goal in the Las Vegas Bowl was because intangibles other than talent or scheme rose above what the opponent gave on that particular play.
“Magic had nothing to do with it,” he said. Neither did “star ratings.”
Tags: amp, attitude, comb, game, lace, perce, soldier, sports, undayRelated posts
