Highly rated recruits

[Husker03]

After seeing both sides of the recruiting arguments flying back and forth lately I realized that I don't know what to believe. Are the evaluations of individual players accurate, but the class recruiting rankings not? Is it true that a player can bust just as easily as a 5 star as his 3 start teammate can? I spent a few hours researching and I am still not sure anything is any clearer, but it is somewhat interesting. I looked at the top 15 rated recruits since 2002 through 2008 according to Rivals. I broke them down as best I could. I assumed that if they were drafted they were probably pretty good in college and therefor a successful recruit. The ones that were not drafted I looked at their contributions, significant starts, conference awards, school records, etc to determine if they would be considered contributors. Then I had busts. Busts almost always were legal issues, injury issues or academic issues. I did not find 1 player that was just not good enough. Honestly. But busts are busts so if they got arrested for theft and never contributed, they made the bust list. There were 2 players that I could not classify, so you can put them into whatever category you would like. Mitch Mustain was one. He was excellent as a frosh but then some weird coaching things and transfers etc derailed him. Is a really good freshmen season a contribution? I didn't know. The other was Nate Robinson. He opted for basketball and is in the NBA. So not really a bust but I guess a bust for the football program. Baker Steiney was one that I put into the "contributor" list, Marlon Lucky as well.

Of the 105 athletes in the assessment pool 85% are/were contributors, 15% were busts. Of the 105, 12 are still in school or waiting on this years draft, 2 were MMustain and NWash, so 91 have been out of school. Of those 91, 70% have been drafted into the NFL. 13 were significant contributors in college and 14 were busts. So again, 85% contributors, 15% busts.

If I could find a way to look at a random group of 3 star rated kids and 4 star rated kids and run 100 of them, then obviously that would be the next step. But it still seems to me that a 70% NFL conversion rate on a look at 17-18 year old kids is more than happenstance or accident.  I guess if it is me I would be more than happy to take my chances with these 5 star guys and their 86% contribution rate than not.

[BubbliciousRed]

The team rankings are totally meaningless.  The individual rankings have some validity, but you have to be careful how you use them.

A 5* is definitely more likely to pan out better than a 3*.  But just like most statitistics, applying that to individuals is incosistent at best. 

Stats will show that 5* are about 10 times more likely to become an all-american than a 3*.  But, since there are about 300 times more 3* players than 5* players, there are actually more 3* all-americans than 5*.

So, if you're blind and dumb, you can go after 5* and hope the odds work in your favor.  However. if you have a great eye for talent, there are a lot more great players in the 3* pool.

On the other side of the formula, you have the services who are trying to make money off people and to be of the most value, they need to be as accurate as possible, so if they can figure out which coaches have the best eye for talent, they start rating their recruits higher. 

Bottom line, take it all with a grain of salt.

[Solly]

This year there were around 32 5* players in the nation. If 86% of them pan out, that would be 27 or 28 that "pan out" - NATION WIDE.

There were dozens of 4* players, and hundreds of 3* players. Which pool is more likely to produce contributing or exceptional players in the greater number?

[Husker03]

It doesn't matter which pool is more likely to produce a higher number of quality players, it matters which pool is more likely to produce the best players. If you can select 20 recruits from the 5 star level, 20 recruits from the 4 star level or 20 recruits from the 3 star level and you have to do this completely at random, numbered ping pong balls in a bucket.. Which bucket you drawing from? Now pretend that your other 3 buddies got to pick from the 5 star bucket first so it is tapped out.. Which bucket do you draw from next?  If it is true that when we get to the 4 star and 3 star level it is complete hogwash, then why is your hand in the process of pulling ping pong balls from the 4 star bucket?

[Husker03]

And yes, I know the coaches aren't doing it at random. That is not what I am discussing. I am discussing the idea that the services are not credible or meaningful in any way.

[Toe]

But busts are busts so if they got arrested for theft and never contributed, they made the bust list.

Well, at least that type of bust isn't taking up a scholarship anymore...

[TommyG]

I think Bo's "character" filter has as much to do with who signs, or doesn't, as whether or not some HS hot shot picks NU. I like this about him.  Adopt a take the most players with the most stars at all costs strategy, and NU has sold its soul to the SEC and PAC-whatever demons.

[tfree32]

I think there's a real correlation between recruiting rankings and on-field success. The recruiting rankings aren't perfect or the end-all-be-all in terms of assessing talent. But they have some definite value in that regard.

I also think there's a correlation between the recruiting rankings for individual players and their probability of panning out.

So in my view it's silly to either trust the recruiting rankings implicitly or to dismiss them entirely. They are what they are...indicators by those who follow college football and college football recruiting of what they think of the players and classes.

[Valiantsailor]

It doesn't matter which pool is more likely to produce a higher number of quality players, it matters which pool is more likely to produce the best players. If you can select 20 recruits from the 5 star level, 20 recruits from the 4 star level or 20 recruits from the 3 star level and you have to do this completely at random, numbered ping pong balls in a bucket.. Which bucket you drawing from? Now pretend that your other 3 buddies got to pick from the 5 star bucket first so it is tapped out.. Which bucket do you draw from next?  If it is true that when we get to the 4 star and 3 star level it is complete hogwash, then why is your hand in the process of pulling ping pong balls from the 4 star bucket?

Husker03, you are going to run into those that hate the rating services but the fact remains, the higher the rating, the more likely it is success will follow whehter its the NFL or AA..  The 5 * s will be more successful every time, of those completing a program.  There is a reason, all the major programs are chasing the same 5 * athletes.   The 4 * s will be next.  The 3* s drop significantly.  None of the  rating services know where the bust will come from.  Its a game of percentages.  What is the differnce between quality players and best players?  Is nt that parsing words?

Those that say the services dont know what they are doing are just plain wrong.  They make it their business adn its very big business, to know who the best players are and to rate them.

There are plenty of articles out there relating to the ratings. Google for them.

[Sexy Leather]

After seeing both sides of the recruiting arguments flying back and forth lately I realized that I don't know what to believe. Are the evaluations of individual players accurate, but the class recruiting rankings not? Is it true that a player can bust just as easily as a 5 star as his 3 start teammate can? I spent a few hours researching and I am still not sure anything is any clearer, but it is somewhat interesting. I looked at the top 15 rated recruits since 2002 through 2008 according to Rivals. I broke them down as best I could. I assumed that if they were drafted they were probably pretty good in college and therefor a successful recruit. The ones that were not drafted I looked at their contributions, significant starts, conference awards, school records, etc to determine if they would be considered contributors. Then I had busts. Busts almost always were legal issues, injury issues or academic issues. I did not find 1 player that was just not good enough. Honestly. But busts are busts so if they got arrested for theft and never contributed, they made the bust list. There were 2 players that I could not classify, so you can put them into whatever category you would like. Mitch Mustain was one. He was excellent as a frosh but then some weird coaching things and transfers etc derailed him. Is a really good freshmen season a contribution? I didn't know. The other was Nate Robinson. He opted for basketball and is in the NBA. So not really a bust but I guess a bust for the football program. Baker Steiney was one that I put into the "contributor" list, Marlon Lucky as well.

Of the 105 athletes in the assessment pool 85% are/were contributors, 15% were busts. Of the 105, 12 are still in school or waiting on this years draft, 2 were MMustain and NWash, so 91 have been out of school. Of those 91, 70% have been drafted into the NFL. 13 were significant contributors in college and 14 were busts. So again, 85% contributors, 15% busts.

If I could find a way to look at a random group of 3 star rated kids and 4 star rated kids and run 100 of them, then obviously that would be the next step. But it still seems to me that a 70% NFL conversion rate on a look at 17-18 year old kids is more than happenstance or accident.  I guess if it is me I would be more than happy to take my chances with these 5 star guys and their 86% contribution rate than not.

1.  Look at South Carolina's DE Jadavian Clowney: Coming out of high school the kid is 6'5", 255 pounds, played with great technique and is incredibly fast.  Ergo it is incredibly easy to look at him, evaluate his film and you just know that barring injury, academic issues or trouble with the law that he's as close to a sure fire NFL talent as there possibly can be.  The non-football equivalent to that would be looking at some kid who scores a 1378 on her/his SAT and then saying that this person is a sure fire attendee of Harvard.  Meaning it goes almost without saying.  So in that respect yes the recruiting services do get it right.

2.  My quarrel with the recruiting services stems from two factors: a) they tend to under-rate kids from sparsely populated areas and over-rate kids from the south.  Just because a kid plays in Florida doesn't by default make him better than a kid from Utah.  And b) since recruiting services are a for profit enterprise there are whispers out there that stars, and a high ranking/evaluation, are for sale.  There is also the economic consideration of different schools with alums who pay the recruiting services for their "inside" information.  In other words, if Rivals has (and I'm just plucking a number out of thin air) 3,000 USC alums paying them then it doesn't take a stretch of imagination to think that any recruit USC is looking at will, by default, be one of the highest "rated" recuits.  At the minimum a particular recuit interested in USC will have his "stock" pushed higher because Rivals wants to keep those 3,000 paying USC customers happy.

[Big Sky Husker]

And yes, I know the coaches aren't doing it at random. That is not what I am discussing. I am discussing the idea that the services are not credible or meaningful in any way.

The thing that is striking... if Nebraska had a top 15 ranked class, most of the folks who are saying Rivals and Scouts don't know what they're doing... well, those fans wouldn't be saying a thing about our class ranking.  I don't remember Nebraska fans saying Rivals was off it's rocker when they had our 2005 class ranked in the top 10. 

[FreightTrain]

The recruiting services have their purpose.  They measure tangible criteria.  They do not measure intangibles.  They are a great tool to use for coaches and writers alike, but they are not the end all.  Osborne had the winningest program of his time and rarely had top ranked classes just due to numbers or lack there of.  The athletes were quality football players but they were also screened with Osborne's very own equation.  Those intangibles such as character.  Parents. Work ethic.  Intelligence.  Those things meant a great deal when you are taking only 15 to 20 scholarship athletes on signing day.  The shear number that the walkon program produced added more numbers of building projects and cannon fodder for multiple practice stations.  Osborne needed those carrots to dangle.  Carrots being those unused scholarships. What came out of the filtered funnel was quality and workable for a program landlocked in the upper midwest with a limited population.  Eventually those kids that the recruiting services missed out in the sticks were then upgraded many times after the fact.  They learned to respect Osborne's equation for reloading.

[Valiantsailor]

The recruiting services have their purpose.  They measure tangible criteria.  They do not measure intangibles.  They are a great tool to use for coaches and writers alike, but they are not the end all.  Osborne had the winningest program of his time and rarely had top ranked classes just due to numbers or lack there of.  The athletes were quality football players but they were also screened with Osborne's very own equation.  Those intangibles such as character.  Parents. Work ethic.  Intelligence.  Those things meant a great deal when you are taking only 15 to 20 scholarship athletes on signing day.  The shear number that the walkon program produced added more numbers of building projects and cannon fodder for multiple practice stations.  Osborne needed those carrots to dangle.  Carrots being those unused scholarships. What came out of the filtered funnel was quality and workable for a program landlocked in the upper midwest with a limited population.  Eventually those kids that the recruiting services missed out in the sticks were then upgraded many times after the fact.  They learned to respect Osborne's equation for reloading.

Wait a minute Freight Train, the idea of TO never had top rates classes is a  myth perpetuated by those who are uninformed.  Tom consistently recruited  top rated athletes from all over the country.  The walk on program worked very well but it was the scholarship athletes that won those NC.  I do agree is/ was smart saving back schollies and not using them for team depth. 

What I dont understand is the angst.is with regard to services.  Do they miss?  Yes, but not as often as the urban myth that perpetuates it.

[Solly]

It doesn't matter which pool is more likely to produce a higher number of quality players, it matters which pool is more likely to produce the best players. If you can select 20 recruits from the 5 star level, 20 recruits from the 4 star level or 20 recruits from the 3 star level and you have to do this completely at random, numbered ping pong balls in a bucket.. Which bucket you drawing from? Now pretend that your other 3 buddies got to pick from the 5 star bucket first so it is tapped out.. Which bucket do you draw from next?  If it is true that when we get to the 4 star and 3 star level it is complete hogwash, then why is your hand in the process of pulling ping pong balls from the 4 star bucket?

You either missed the point entirely, or are ignoring it purposely. The recruiting process is not a matter of random chance, and the "buckets" are not even close to equal in population. It is a fact that there are far, FAR fewer 5*-rated players each and every year than the 4* or 3* pools hold - by orders of magnitude; that's not disputable.

If a team focuses too large a portion of its recruiting effort and resources to the pursuit of that tiny pool of 5* players, they'll be sorely disappointed. In your ping pong ball analogy, there would be one 5* for every ten 4* and every hundred 3* players.  Of the 120 or so Division 1-A teams, perhaps 25 or so have the reputation and cachet of the moment to even draw for the 5* in a given year. If you look at the origin of those programs' current success, you are not likely to find some jump-off point where they suddenly had a boatload of 5* recruits spontaneously decide to attend that school. What you will find is that those teams had their initial moment in the sun when they took a team predicated on recruitment of players who fit their systems, put forth a maximum effort, and absorbed their coaching.

In this case, there isn't a "chicken-or-egg" question regarding the impact of 5* players. The program almost always had to have already attained a notable level of success before they drew the attention, and thus gained easier access to the miniscule 5* pool. The few exceptions tend to involve geography, legacy, of academic detours that took a player to a JC.

As a result, you have a skewed level of competition for each pool of players. The 3* pool will have the most schools involved, and greater per-player competition based solely on the inertia of so many suitors, with each ascending rating, the pool of suitors narrows, but the intensity of the recruitment increases, as the successively smaller groups of more accomplished programs seeks to augment its coaching through the gain of ostensibly more naturally-talented raw materials.

The theory is simple - that applying the same coaching that originally lifted their programs to prominence using players of overall lower initial perceived potential to players who they believe will begin the process at a more advanced state will allow the process to advance more quickly and/or progress further over the course of the recruit's college career.

But the theory is also simplistic, particularly if there is too great a reliance on largely-subjective ratings, usually produced by individuals who have no particular expertise in the game in general, and none whatsoever in any given team's needs, systems, or coaching acumen. And here is where the disconnects occur. The 5* player is brought into the fold, and it turns out he isn't all that he was perceived to be in the degree to which his skills can be elevated; he's already maxed out. Or the 5* player comes into the fold, and the coaches' ability to improve him has been overestimated, or they don't put forth enough effort to do so, assuming he'll just excel because he started the race further down the track (See Nebraska 2004-2007). Or the 5* player is an ill fit for the coaches' systems, and cannot be coached into a "fit'. (Troy Aikman as an option quarterback at OU). Or the 5* kid washes out in school, or isn't mentally tough, or is a prima donna who refuses to put in the work necessary to advance and improve.

No single team will get an entire class of 5* players, nor a plurality, nor a majority. No Head Coach worth a tenth of his salary will rely heavily on the subjective "star" rankings of a given player, because they'll be more focused on the player's fitment to those areas I cited as nodes for "disconnect" for the 5* player - they apply to all players. A 4* player, or even a 3* player, who fits the HC's criteria for ability, system fit, determination and effort, coachability, and academics will outperform and out-acheive the 5* who does not. The fact that a program will get more opportunities with 3*- and 4*-level players makes it impractical and downright foolish to place too much faith or effort into the recruitment 5* talent. It isn't that a given program should eschew their pursuit, but they should rely far, far more on their own metrics than ratings and rankings that are designed for fans' consumption, after all.

This lays outside of the fact that several 4* by all rights should rate as 5*, 3* should rate as 4*, etc.

Nebraska is on the very edge of those schools who are successful enough to get into a targeted 5* kid's school and living room with a credible chance at landing him. 14 years from a National title and 12 years from a Conference crown will erode that status - history holds only so much sway with 17- and 18-year olds, after all.

Taking that into consideration, Pelini and his Huskers need to knock down notable accomplishments within the next couple of seasons. Playing in the Big Ten Conference Championship, winning the Big Ten Conference Championship, playing in a BCS Bowl, winning a BCS Bowl - this is the progression NU must embark upon. That "jump-off point" I cited early on is where Nebraska is going into 2012 - where they need to take a step down the above sequence using the players then do have on-hand.

Another member asked me whether I thought NU had the talent on-hand to win a National Title within the next couple of years. The only way that could happen would be through tremendous attrition among the teams that will certainly be ranked ahead of them, a great NU season, and a lot of luck. So no, I don't find it likely. What I do think is well within the team's reach starting in 2012, is the front end of that sequence: GET to the B1G Conference Championship Game, then win it; that gets you to a BCS game. They are good enough to aspire to to that sequence right now, perhaps even to run through those first three of four steps. Job one is to get onto these stages that demand recruits' attention, which increases with each successive step.

Stated flatly, I believe Nebraska will be in, and win a Conference Championship within the next three seasons, and be back in the BCS mix and in the hunt for the title before this latest batch of recruits graduates. Further, I believe that the recruiting class of 2012 - scholarship recruits and walk-ons - will contribute mightily to those efforts, and be recognized as pivotal to NU's resurgence.

[FreightTrain]

The recruiting services have their purpose.  They measure tangible criteria.  They do not measure intangibles.  They are a great tool to use for coaches and writers alike, but they are not the end all.  Osborne had the winningest program of his time and rarely had top ranked classes just due to numbers or lack there of.  The athletes were quality football players but they were also screened with Osborne's very own equation.  Those intangibles such as character.  Parents. Work ethic.  Intelligence.  Those things meant a great deal when you are taking only 15 to 20 scholarship athletes on signing day.  The shear number that the walkon program produced added more numbers of building projects and cannon fodder for multiple practice stations.  Osborne needed those carrots to dangle.  Carrots being those unused scholarships. What came out of the filtered funnel was quality and workable for a program landlocked in the upper midwest with a limited population.  Eventually those kids that the recruiting services missed out in the sticks were then upgraded many times after the fact.  They learned to respect Osborne's equation for reloading.

Wait a minute Freight Train, the idea of TO never had top rates classes is a  myth perpetuated by those who are uninformed.  Tom consistently recruited  top rated athletes from all over the country.  The walk on program worked very well but it was the scholarship athletes that won those NC.  I do agree is/ was smart saving back schollies and not using them for team depth. 

What I dont understand is the angst.is with regard to services.  Do they miss?  Yes, but not as often as the urban myth that perpetuates it.

I don't have anything against the services.  If I ever said that I surly don't remember.  Never said his classes were not quality, as that would be silly.  I did say a few times that the services are not the end all to recruiting.  Your missing my point in a big way Val.  I talked about the intangibles the services do not address.  Nebraska never had too many top ten recruiting classes in Osborne's years as head coach as far as the services go  Maybe in his latter years when they actually figured out what he was doing..  Steele referred that to the lack of number due to saving them for the walkon program.  In fact there were many stories over the years noting that.  I'm referring to the many times he didn't finish in the mythical race for the top ten recruiting classes, as opposed to the many times those classes finished in the top ten in the final rankings.