I actually agree with a lot of what you said here. There is no doubt in my mind that Derek Dooley has better information on recruits than does Brent Hubbs. Zero doubt. With this information, Dooley and his staff are able to put together various lists and sub-lists that are more informed than the lists you see at Rivals. I agree with every bit of that.
But I'm also certain that if you were to take the Rivals list and put it up side by side next to Dooley's, there would be a pretty decent correlation between the two. I mean, it isn't *that* hard to evaluate talent. By extension, if you put Dooley's list side by side with Nick Saban's list, there would also be a pretty good correlation between the two. What I'm getting at here is that Derek can (and he probably actually does) know who the best players in the country are. But that doesn't mean that he's getting them. If he were getting them, I believe our recruiting classes would (a) look a lot more like Bama's than they presently do, and (b) this would also be reflected in the recruiting rankings.
Does this make sense? I fully concede that recruiting services have imperfect information, but the evidence suggests that it is good enough for us fans to use as a barometer to know whether we are keeping up with the Sabans and such. To state this slightly differently, I don't have any reason to believe that the lesser ranked players we are getting are "diamonds in the rough". I have no reason to believe that Dooley and Co. know something that the rest of the coaches in the SEC don't know. And so stargazing, while imperfect, is much more constructive than star ignoring.
