5* recruiting (debunked)

[BigOrangeTrain]

First, what a player turns out like in the NFL means nothing while in college. It’s simple, the more higher ranked players you have the more you win. When was the last time a team had more 2 and 3* diamond in the rough types and won a NC?

Everybody hopes for another Kahlil Mack or Antonio Brown. But they are kind of rare. If you don’t have the big time 4 and 5* guys, then you aren’t winning at a high rate. Certainly not winning titles.

 

[butchna]

First, what a player turns out like in the NFL means nothing while in college. It’s simple, the more higher ranked players you have the more you win. When was the last time a team had more 2 and 3* diamond in the rough types and won a NC?

Everybody hopes for another Kahlil Mack or Antonio Brown. But they are kind of rare. If you don’t have the big time 4 and 5* guys, then you aren’t winning at a high rate. Certainly not winning titles.

And you don’t get to where you load up on that egghead rated talent until you build a team that they’ll flock to...chicken egg ****. You build with evaluated talent and never lose that ability to evaluate. That’s what helped undo Fulmer. He started letting the services devise his recruiting strategy.

 

[The Original Fade]

No they’re not. You’re a star sheep.

The teams that pull in top 10 classes every 3 out of 5 years or so usually do pretty dang well on the field. Why this is so hard for some of you is beyond me

 

[butchna]

The teams that pull in top 10 classes every 3 out of 5 years or so usually do pretty dang well on the field. Why this is so hard for some of you is beyond me

But how they get there also seems to be beyond you. Clemson is setting up an epic class...two seasons after finishing 16th.

 

[hUTch2002]

The thread was posted a few days ago suggesting we don't have a chance without 5* recruits. So I took to google to find out how right he could be and decided, instead of debating a percentage of what I learned based on a comment here and there, why not put it all on here? So here we go.

Let's see how we would feel about this hypothetical roster at UT back in the day.

Qb1 Arron Rodgers
Qb2 Matt Ryan
Rb1 Levion Bell
Wr. Mike Evans
OL Travis Frederick
OL. Trent Williams
TE. Travis Kelsey

C. Richard Sherman
DL Von Miller
DL Arron Donald
DL Cliff Avril
All 3* recruits and that's just the probowl.

According to 247 we shouldnt be talking about 2* talent such as Aquib Talib or Kalil Mack because they are less likely to go pro.

Even less talk is deserved for the bottom feeders (unranked) such as Tony Romo and Tom Brady.

Ive never been a believer in the recruiting services for reasons unimportant (although one reason should already be clear). But if you choose to believe a panel full of guys that went to school to learn how to do this from a book, be my guest. I'll trust my own eyes and experience along with the coaching staff that trust the same things over what some pencil pusher says they are.

You forgot Blake Carringer. Greatest 3* in history.

 

[1vol8]

Depends on who does the rating. The services are unreliable and have been corrupted by camp politics. If they went to a neutral scouting service, I’d put more stock in them. The fact that a kid can go from unrated to 3 stars after being offered by a certain school shows how flawed the process is. There’s not enough acknowledged 5 stars each year to fret over.

And I can attest to the politics of recruiting. I can tell you a story that's completely true yet everyone on this board will call me a liar. So i'l keep it to myself. But political is an understatement.

 

[1vol8]

You forgot Blake Carringer. Greatest 3* in history.

Ill go with Ar12

 

[Ten_Titans]

This again.

There's significantly more 3 star players than 5 star players. So if you take a group of elite NFL players, there's a better chance of any one of them being a 3 star than a 5 star.

But the percentage of elite 5 star players out of total 5 star players is much higher than elite 3 star players out of total 3 star players.

So for any individual player, you have a better chance of getting an elite player the higher their star ranking. Which is obvious to anyone who isn't doing mental gymnastics to convince themselves otherwise.

 

[golfballs]

Talent is just one component to success

 

[Volsfaninva917]

Worst season in our history and they doubled up...and we beat them in a bowl right before. #Scoreboard

Yeah, there have been better pillow fights than that Music City Bowl

 

[chargervol]

Simple as I can put it.
ANYONE here could assign a 4* rating to each kid being pursued by the top 5 programs.
After 4 years, that poster would appear to be a recruiting guru.

 

[ksgovols]

It's a chicken and egg thing. The stars aren't begot by the recruiting services. Those guys are just data collectors. They follow the offers and the stars align. Those bumps are real. Recruiting gurus aren't talent evaluators. They crunch data, apply a value to School A's offer versus School Z's and come up with a Sagarin like ranking system that tells them who the 5 stars should be. Oh, there's a few that have inside dope through networking with grad assistants and lower tier coaches and camp administrators. Saban is not telling these star gazers to add stars to his recruits. He'd rather they didn't exist in his world.

Yeah, there's something to the star system, but it's a where there's smoke there's fire sort of thing. Real talent evaluators would be invaluable to a Power 5 school. If recruiting services were good at it, they'd be coaching instead of selling subscriptions to their service.

 

[njvols]

So let me get this straight..... if any team that wants to compete for a NC needs a top 10 class every yr, are we saying that Butch Jones could take over in Alabama, do things his way and win a natty?

Over a period of years, it's all kinda correlated...talent and coaching (no star consideration). Just my personal opinion over a period of years, and not a "one year blowout". So, as we saw, CBJ reached his ceiling w/ 9 wins and good lineup of future NFL players...void of NFL players, poor coaching and bad talent isn't a good thing.
* Top talent + top coaching = consistent top 10 and national contenders...last two years (Bama, Clem, UGA, OK, Ohio St)
* Top talent + mediocre coaching = LSU
* Good talent + poor coaching = Florida (Mac)
* Mediocre talent + top/good coaching = consistent top 25...Notre Dame/Mich St type...Kentucky/Miz last couple years
* Poor talent + mediocre coaching = Pruitt first year
* Mediocre talent + bad coaching = UT under Butch for years 3-4.
* Poor talent + poor coaching = UT for the majority of the last 10 years

Pruitt's got us on the right path, but going to take a few more years.

 

[vegasvolfan]

The star rating is how the recruiting services measure the likelihood of a player going pro. That being said if they were even 50% accurate there would be many more 4-5* players active in the NFL vs 3*s given the ratio of around 1 in 100,000 making to the league to begin with.

The best way to tell is what is the ratio of five stars that go pro to other ratings. If more 5 stars go pro per number of five star recruits, then you want more 5 stars.

In my opinion, you really don’t need to analyze this. Proof is in orange and blue and crimson every year now. However, you have to have good coaches who know how to utilize and develop talent and an open checkbook. We have that now. Now it is up to them to do what they are paid to do, and if we are lucky the difference in our coaching will outweigh the difference in star ratings of other teams. It will boils down to that until we recruit at the same level as other teams. If we can beat other coaches with lower rated talent, it will be a no-brainer for highly rated players to follow. Much like Swinney or Rick Barnes if you want to pull from recent UT sports.

 

[volsrock09]

It’s not a RULE because blowhard star johns deem it so. You BUILD your team and program with the talent you can land and develop. Once that’s established, the talent that service egghead nerds rate higher will sign on more readily.

247Sports' annual PSA: Recruiting rankings matter

There is a reason most, if not all, 4 and 5 stars have huge offer lists. Coaches see the talent, but they fail to either maximize and develop their performance or the players do not have the work ethic among other things that could go wrong. Only one team that has been to the Playoff has not had a top 10 class and even then they were routinely in the top 15. Coaching is very important in a teams success, and a players talent is equally important, in my opinion. You could be the greatest coach in history and take a team with no talent to 5 wins and still be a great coach that just does not have the talent. You could have talent, but not be very good at coaching (2015-2016 Vols rings a bell with Kamara, Sutton, Dobbs, Barnett, etc.) and only win 9 games when they had the talent to at least win 11-12 games. Coaching and lack of talent can cost you games.

 

[NEO]

A great coach with 3 stars can beat a bad coach with 4 stars.

But a great coach with 5 stars still beats a great coach with 3 stars.

I just want to get back to beating teams like vandy and Missouri on a regular basis. Then we can worry about going after the great coaches with elite talent.

 

[VolForLife83]

Obviously we have to wait and see, it amazes me how so many say that like they thought it up all by themselves

.

Probably because it's common sense. This is a discussion, not a creative thinking thread.

Not quite as silly as that dumb joke about the window washer. That one is embarrassing. You should stop using it. Jmo, Tifwiw

.
Well, we all know how narcissists feel about their opinions.

When someone says they are trusting the coaches, they must be reminded that the last 2 losers were being paid handsomely for the exact same thing. I dunno about you, but I need to see some output first. With that said, I think Pruitt is a lot more capable than Dooley/Butch. But the success Pruitt has had, comes from coaching other guys recruits. We don't know if he can truly evaluate. I'm sure everyone thought Butch was a genius when Dobbs was running wild. Now look at him. WASHING DADDIES WINDOWS ON YOUTUBE, while UT pays him

 

[VolForLife83]

Over a period of years, it's all kinda correlated...talent and coaching (no star consideration). Just my personal opinion over a period of years, and not a "one year blowout". So, as we saw, CBJ reached his ceiling w/ 9 wins and good lineup of future NFL players...void of NFL players, poor coaching and bad talent isn't a good thing.
* Top talent + top coaching = consistent top 10 and national contenders...last two years (Bama, Clem, UGA, OK, Ohio St)
* Top talent + mediocre coaching = LSU
* Good talent + poor coaching = Florida (Mac)
* Mediocre talent + top/good coaching = consistent top 25...Notre Dame/Mich St type...Kentucky/Miz last couple years
* Poor talent + mediocre coaching = Pruitt first year
* Mediocre talent + bad coaching = UT under Butch for years 3-4.
* Poor talent + poor coaching = UT for the majority of the last 10 years

Pruitt's got us on the right path, but going to take a few more years.

Good post. Truth is, when it comes down to it, they're just too many players out there for recruiting services to get it right on every player. Couple that with limited numbers for 4 and 5* players and guys that don't camp, or hasn't been discovered yet and you're bound to see some successful underrated player's.
Ultimately, it's going to take time to see the results with this staff either way. I just think the majority of us see, that the teams having the highest amount of success, have been doing it with higher rated players.

Honestly, recruiting services should add more spots for 4 and 5*

 

[1vol8]

A great coach with 3 stars can beat a bad coach with 4 stars.

But a great coach with 5 stars still beats a great coach with 3 stars.

I just want to get back to beating teams like vandy and Missouri on a regular basis. Then we can worry about going after the great coaches with elite talent.

Js the are a lot of 3* out there that are better than the 5*s you see. You just don't know it because they are overlooked and therefore relatively unknown for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with the player or his skillset. Don't fool yourself into thinking these recruiting services evaluate every single player at every position every yr. They concentrate on the highest ranked highschools the most and never even blink an eye at the lower ranked ones unless someone is a standout on a bad team.

 

[butchna]

247Sports' annual PSA: Recruiting rankings matter

There is a reason most, if not all, 4 and 5 stars have huge offer lists. Coaches see the talent, but they fail to either maximize and develop their performance or the players do not have the work ethic among other things that could go wrong. Only one team that has been to the Playoff has not had a top 10 class and even then they were routinely in the top 15. Coaching is very important in a teams success, and a players talent is equally important, in my opinion. You could be the greatest coach in history and take a team with no talent to 5 wins and still be a great coach that just does not have the talent. You could have talent, but not be very good at coaching (2015-2016 Vols rings a bell with Kamara, Sutton, Dobbs, Barnett, etc.) and only win 9 games when they had the talent to at least win 11-12 games. Coaching and lack of talent can cost you games.

Refute my anti-service take with a service article...well played. Kind of disingenuous to characterize my stance as disregarding talent...that’s not it at all. Just my skepticism of the RATING of said talent. When a prospect’s rating fluctuates wildly depending on who offers and who they COMMIT to? Color me skeptical of the science. We need talent and coaching and the talent needs to be believed by the coaching.

 

[Bash]

To your larger point, it is simply wrong. Just look at the blue chip ratio. ALL 4 playoff teams were 50%+ blue chip recruits this season. Bama has dominated CFB while recruiting #1 and a couple #2 classes.

This point isn't even debatable. It is beyond settled. If you are behind on this, catch up.

This! Withoout 50% of your class being 4 or 5 star your chances of being in the playoffs or winning a NC are low. There's a strong correlation for this %. Google it. Acting like star rankings don't matter is not supported by the evidence. For **** sake, Volnation. Stop being stupid.

 

[Smokeyone]

It’s not a RULE because blowhard star johns deem it so. You BUILD your team and program with the talent you can land and develop. Once that’s established, the talent that service egghead nerds rate higher will sign on more readily.

So the goal is still playing the percentages and getting the best players you can.

When your starter goes out of the game you want the best possible player going in to replace them. Your odds are better (not a lock but better) that the 4☆ recruit coming in will see less of a drop of than a 3☆ coming off the bench.

Now can a coach or staff see something in a guy that doesn't go to many camps that makes them believe a guy is under rated? Or a guy with all measurables in the world just not be able to preform under pressure so you pass on him? Absolutely. Exceptions to the rule do not invalidate the rule.

Coaching evaluations do matter. In picking kids to offer they are king. In a highly specialized system they matter. But all other things being equal try to get those 4-5 ☆ guys on your roster. Because exceptions to the rule do not invalidate the rule.

Especially when you are attempting to close the talent gap. I am sick of seeing UGA win by being deeper and more talented. It's not coaching for them, it's not player dependant, its depth and talent.

 

[butchna]

So the goal is still playing the percentages and getting the best players you can.

When your starter goes out of the game you want the best possible player going in to replace them. Your odds are better (not a lock but better) that the 4☆ recruit coming in will see less of a drop of than a 3☆ coming off the bench.

Now can a coach or staff see something in a guy that doesn't go to many camps that makes them believe a guy is under rated? Or a guy with all measurables in the world just not be able to preform under pressure so you pass on him? Absolutely. Exceptions to the rule do not invalidate the rule.

Coaching evaluations do matter. In picking kids to offer they are king. In a highly specialized system they matter. But all other things being equal try to get those 4-5 ☆ guys on your roster. Because exceptions to the rule do not invalidate the rule.

Especially when you are attempting to close the talent gap. I am sick of seeing UGA win by being deeper and more talented. It's not coaching for them, it's not player dependant, its depth and talent.

Key word TALENT. I’ll go with this staff’s evaluation of such over mama’s boys number crunchers who are simply reading offers and taking orders from their service masters.

 

[Smokeyone]

This is dumb. Anecdotally, you can find any number of missed ratings that prove that stars don't matter. But aggregate that into a big picture and in general the higher rated guy will be better.

Depth, consistent depth. If you recruit at a high level the coming off the bench is more likely to not hurt you.

 

[sjt18]

The teams that pull in top 10 classes every 3 out of 5 years or so usually do pretty dang well on the field. Why this is so hard for some of you is beyond me

For it to be a rule... those who pull those highly rated classes would always have rosters with elite talent.

Jones' star-gazing proved that incorrect. But I don't remember Jones winning a lot of head to head recruiting match ups with the best coaches. A few. Mostly UT homers like Hurd. But mostly he won 4* player that no one but the recruiting sites were all that impressed with.

It is closer to the truth that getting players that Saban and a few others pursue is more indicative of getting championship talent than signing 5* guys. Knowing this... the recruiting sites follow a few guys like Saban around like puppies to figure out who should get 5*.