PLAYER RANKINGS (do they matter?). Let the debate!

[Orange.]

Everyone who loves to talk about the theory, practice, competence, manipulation, and effect of the star system and player rankings should have a special place to devoted to this interest imo.

Also, the RF would benefit -- not only by having all the opinions and information on this subject in one place -- but the individual individual player thread would benefit because news specific to recruits would not be overwhelmed by posts about rankings in general.

If someone quoted your post in a player thread and posted and replied to it here, do you think it would help to have everything in one place?

Would some people knowledgeable on and interested in player rankings be willing to take the lead here and explain why how much rankings matter? Ot how they don't?

 

[GetEmVols]

Player rankings matter. Every playoff national champion had a top 3 ranked recruiting class

 

[GetEmVols]

Player rankings matter. Every playoff national champion had a top 3 ranked recruiting class

Proof that recruiting rankings matter. He isn’t doing this for a 2 star. [VIDEO=][/VIDEO]

 

[9876543vol]

Player rankings matter. Every playoff national champion had a top 3 ranked recruiting class

Rankings follow top coaches, not the other way around.

 

[SugarCC]

Proof that recruiting rankings matter. He isn’t doing this for a 2 star. [VIDEO=][/VIDEO]

You're right...he did it for a 3*, Eddie Smith. That video is from 2018, with Smith's family. He chose Bama over UT, and is now at Ark St.

 

[GetEmVols]

Rankings follow top coaches, not the other way around.

Which is why the rankings matter to us.

 

[GetEmVols]

You're right...he did it for a 3*, Eddie Smith. That video is from 2018, with Smith's family. He chose Bama over UT, and is now at Ark St.

So I guess rankings do matter. 3* didn’t pan out. Some 5* don’t always work out either but daban isn’t winning a national championship with a roster full of 3* and 4*. He knows this.

 

[norrislakevol]

Rankings follow top coaches, not the other way around.

Because if you cannot recruit higher ranked players then you are not a top coach. They do have to be developed, sure, but you have to get them there first.

 

[VolBricks]

It is about the Jimmy's and the Joe's, everybody knows that. Are there exceptions to the "rule", absolutely, but for the most part the best players/team wins the game.

 

[BigSteve09]

Yes. Then you have to develop them physically and mentally.

Some coaches are elite at identifying the best players.
Some are elite at attracting (or have elite resources) the best players.
Some are elite at developing the players to be the best on the field.
Some are elite at preparing them to be men.
Some are elite at Gameday coaching.
Some are elite at big picture program management.
Some are good at a few of those things.
Very few are good at all of them.

We all know who finishes at the top of the recruiting rankings every year.

That matters:
Blue-Chip Ratio 2022: The 15 teams who can actually win a national title

Then there's this:
Development Rating 2022: A five-year deep dive into which programs best develop elite, blue-chip talent

Getting the best players and having the best players are two different things but they matter.

 

[bignewt]

great place to sweep all the noise into. do your work, mods

 

[Orange_Crush]

This is where we post about women's basketball injuries?

 

[bignewt]

This is where we post about women's basketball injuries?

would be about as interesting.

 

[unfrozencvmanvol]

The folks who don't think recruiting rankings matter are like flat earthers, not sure what can change their mind, or what point there is trying. It's pretty clear that in the aggregate, recruiting rankings are valid and do matter, though they are not perfect and can miss on select players. 5 stars stand a better chance of being drafted than 4 stars and 4 stars stand a better chance of being drafted than 3 stars, 3 stars stand a better chance of being drafted than unrated players, etc., however because there are so many 3 stars many of them do inevitably get drafted. There are roughly 30-35 five stars every year, 250 or 300 four stars and like 1,200 three stars. There's also this:

Blue-Chip Ratio 2022: The 15 teams who can actually win a national title

 

[sjt18]

Player rankings matter. Every playoff national champion had a top 3 ranked recruiting class

So you are saying those teams were talented AS A RESULT OF being ranked higher? I just responded to more of BOT's non-sense in another thread. It is pretty easy for them to take a peak at who Saban, Day, Smart, and Swinney are recruiting... look at their measurables then slap a high rating on them. They know those programs are winners, send lots of guys to the NFL, and have a great process for recruiting.

But when the recruiting sites have to go more on their own... they simply DO NOT predict winners. IIRC, only 9 of the final top 25 last year had averaged a top 25 class in the previous 4 years.


Here are the standings from last year and the 4 year composite talent ranking in the SEC according to 247:

UGA- 2
UK- 12
UT- 7
MU- 13
USCe- 8
UF- 4
Vandy- 14

Bama- 1
OM- 9
Ark- 10
MSU- 11
TAM- 5
Aub- 6
LSU- 3

You can attribute part of that to coaching but the West according to the talent 247 says each program has... is essentially upside down. They can take cues from UGA and Bama but when they have to evaluate more on their own... they don't predict winners. Recruiting rankings do not predict winners... except for the really easy predictions.

 

[sjt18]

The folks who don't think recruiting rankings matter are like flat earthers, not sure what can change their mind, or what point there is trying. It's pretty clear that in the aggregate, recruiting rankings are valid and do matter, though they are not perfect and can miss on select players. 5 stars stand a better chance of being drafted than 4 stars and 4 stars stand a better chance of being drafted than 3 stars, 3 stars stand a better chance of being drafted than unrated players, etc., however because there are so many 3 stars many of them do inevitably get drafted. There are roughly 30-35 five stars every year, 250 or 300 four stars and like 1,200 three stars. There's also this:

Blue-Chip Ratio 2022: The 15 teams who can actually win a national title

LOL... they're selling a product. There are 3 teams on that list with a good chance to win the NC. Last year's list would have been very similar based on the same criteria... and at least a third of those teams were pretty bad.

 

[VolFreakJosh]

Cedric Tillman

 

[Peytons_Forehead]

I’d love for this to be a thread by itself, mainly to talk about data questions.

For example: does average recruiting ranking over the trailing 4 years correlate to in-conference wins? What matters more, team class rank or average recruit rating? What is more predictive of wins- recruiting score or recruiting ranking within your conference/schedule? Are services ranking independently, or following high profile offers? How do answers to those questions change with different assumptions? Lots of interesting questions here.

I did a little intro analysis to maybe help kickstart things. I chose to analyze ACC teams during 2019. This was to include a “national title tier” team while also being more representative of CFB as a whole, since the SEC has Bama and UGA as well as recruiting better on the whole. I recorded each teams average class ranking, average conference recruiting rank (1-14), and average player ranking from 2014-18, and compared each to 2019 conference win count via linear regression.

All of the regressions seem to point towards traditional knowledge- teams that recruited better than their conference peers won more within their conference. What was interesting to me were the R-squared (statistical significance) values. None of the metrics reached or even came close to the threshold for statistical significance. Interestingly, average player ranking seems to be more indicative of success than class ranking. Even more interestingly, if we exclude Clemson from the data, while the trends still exist the statistical significance plummets to near-0. More data could improve this significance value, but in this limited sample size I think there are some interesting implications. I’d like to see this expanded to other conferences and more years to see if the trends are similar.

Charts attached, excuse the crappy photo resolution as I’m only logged in on mobile.

 

[unfrozencvmanvol]

LOL... they're selling a product. There are 3 teams on that list with a good chance to win the NC. Last year's list would have been very similar based on the same criteria... and at least a third of those teams were pretty bad.

Speaking of flat earthers.

 

[Peytons_Forehead]

So you are saying those teams were talented AS A RESULT OF being ranked higher? I just responded to more of BOT's non-sense in another thread. It is pretty easy for them to take a peak at who Saban, Day, Smart, and Swinney are recruiting... look at their measurables then slap a high rating on them. They know those programs are winners, send lots of guys to the NFL, and have a great process for recruiting.

But when the recruiting sites have to go more on their own... they simply DO NOT predict winners. IIRC, only 9 of the final top 25 last year had averaged a top 25 class in the previous 4 years.


Here are the standings from last year and the 4 year composite talent ranking in the SEC according to 247:

UGA- 2
UK- 12
UT- 7
MU- 13
USCe- 8
UF- 4
Vandy- 14

Bama- 1
OM- 9
Ark- 10
MSU- 11
TAM- 5
Aub- 6
LSU- 3

You can attribute part of that to coaching but the West according to the talent 247 says each program has... is essentially upside down. They can take cues from UGA and Bama but when they have to evaluate more on their own... they don't predict winners. Recruiting rankings do not predict winners... except for the really easy predictions.

This is probably too simple of a view. What’s the class score gap between Bama and, for instance, UF, compared to UF and Arkansas? A middle high team in terms of ranking might actually be closer to the bottom than the top given the dominance of certain SEC teams. In order to say whether/to what extent ranking matter, we need to understand things like that. Another point- does it make more sense to weight the rankings based on experience?

For instance, say team A signs classes ranked:
2016-200
2017-200
2018-200
2019-250

Versus team B:
2016-200
2017-250
2018-200
2019-200

Team B would be favored, given the extra experience for the “high talent” class, assuming no transfers. Straight averages treat those as the same. I do think recruiting rankings ultimately matter, but unless there’s an overwhelming degree of dominance (Bama or Georgia) I think there’s a lot of other complex factors that make simplistic rankings a bad form of analysis.

 

[sjt18]

This is probably too simple of a view. What’s the class score gap between Bama and, for instance, UF, compared to UF and Arkansas? A middle high team in terms of ranking might actually be closer to the bottom than the top given the dominance of certain SEC teams. In order to say whether/to what extent ranking matter, we need to understand things like that. Another point- does it make more sense to weight the rankings based on experience?

For instance, say team A signs classes ranked:
2016-200
2017-200
2018-200
2019-250

Versus team B:
2016-200
2017-250
2018-200
2019-200

Team B would be favored, given the extra experience for the “high talent” class, assuming no transfers. Straight averages treat those as the same. I do think recruiting rankings ultimately matter, but unless there’s an overwhelming degree of dominance (Bama or Georgia) I think there’s a lot of other complex factors that make simplistic rankings a bad form of analysis.

Worse than "Bama, UGA, OSU, and Clemson have won the last X number of NC's therefore the recruiting sites are accurate?

You make some good points that could be resolved with more years of analysis. On the whole though if 2021 is an exception... exceptions still should not occur to that level if the recruiting sites are actually accurate without significant help from looking at "who offers".

I mean a lot of people here use that logic as well. It isn't uncommon to read, "Yeah, 3* but the offer list is great".

The recruiting sites to the extent they have good information will look at measurables. They will look at HS stats. They LOVE camps since that's the closest they get to actual oranges to oranges competition. But ALL of those are severely limited. Measurables don't always translate. HS competition skews stat importance. Not all great talents will camp and even those that do can over/under perform.

They put some resources into it. They just aren't very accurate without weighting the offers of top programs heavily. They aren't as accurate as some want to believe regardless. They limit the number of 4/5* grades they hand out which should make it pretty easy to identify a bunch of elite players. Yet only about 20% of those players will be drafted. Less than half of any given draft will be made up of former "blue chips".

 

[sjt18]

Speaking of flat earthers.

nope.

LOL... the irony of your screen name RE that claim.

 

[unfrozencvmanvol]

nope.

LOL... the irony of your screen name RE that claim.

Not a fan of old school SNL eh?

 

[VolFreakJosh]

The problem with the star gazers’ argument is they claim 4 & 5*s have a better chance at getting drafted.

While that’s true to some extent, there’s players out there who are overlooked by the recruiting experts whether they don’t have enough film on them, play for a small school, or simply didn’t evaluate them correctly.

Some kids don’t camp then they randomly get bumped down in the rankings.

The recruiting system is flawed in so many ways.

 

[KPT_VFL]

Low ranked kids can become good players. Teams with mostly high ranked players are winning championships.


people will love to point out the 3 star who had an amazing career and made the NFL but fails to point out that the teams winning it all every year signed majority 4-5 star players.