23 teams average higher per recruit than OU on Rivals

So 1 in 45 players in college football are an All-American, as in, more than 1 per team on average? That can't be right. Am I missing something?

 

And my question is an honest question...I've worked as an NFL draft guy for close to 9 years..I have no idea how to grade a kid out of high school because I'm going to automatically expect too much..Likewise, when recruiting guys get into the NFL draft stuff, they usuallly overrate everyone.

It seems in my opinion, there are positions were that may be more important than others...Dline, Oline.. It seems that those positions would be hard to differentiate between a 3 and 5...

 

I know this horse has been beaten to death, but you probably have as much (if not more) ability to rate a kid out of high school, as most of the recruiting gurus. It's one thing to try and understand how a high school kid is rated, as I actually think there is a certain level of validity in the process. However, the class rankings are pretty much junk. If all things were equal year in and year out, it'd be a different story. But, it's not. So, there is no way to look at what team X brought in and compare it to what team Y brought in, and try to accurately rank the two. Team X may need more players at TE, whereas team Y needs more help at DB. Not to mention that how many schollys a team has to give out changes every year based on roster personnel.

I could care less where the OU class ranking ends up. It's kind of a worthless stat. I'm much more interested in the individual players, and what they have done and are expected to do.

 

I remember seeing GK in the Army AA game and instantly being excited for his OU future. The offensive lineman on the other side of him simply couldn't stop him.

I think that's the definition of a 5-star right there

 

So I want you guys to look closely at this list (this year's rivals 100)

http://rivals.yahoo.com/oklahoma/football/recruiting/rankings/rank-2640

Do you notice how SKEWED the 5*s are toward athlete positions (running back and wide receiver)? Maybe its the fact that I deal with data and mathematical weighting proofs way too much, but there are significant cases of bias being pushed into the results. This would be similar to me inviting fans of every college team to a football quiz bowl with 8x and then only asking questions about OU. His performance is going to be much higher because of the bias.

This is also the reason why I pointed out that they use a 3 point system instead of a 10 point system. Anything less that 5 point spreads produce statistically insignificant data variations (which is why pretty much all customer service surveys you see are at least 5 values). They then further disguise it AS a 5 point system so that you infer that it must be correct.

The last part is the team rankings. I want you to notice the top 15ish teams here and the point spread between them -> http://rivals.yahoo.com/oklahoma/football/recruiting/teamrank/2013/all/all . Now I want you to think about how hard it would be to tweak that top 10 to where teams that typically win a lot (and have high fan bases) are in the top 10. Bumping 1 guy from 3* to 4* for OU would push us past FSU. It is just too easy to look at the final rankings for the last decade and make subjective "tweaks" to individual recruits to align recruiting with probable win totals (for example, I don't care how bad OU's classes were - 3 out of 4 years they'd be in the top 10 because that is where they normally end the season).

 

There are what 74 on all 3 AA teams + HMs and like 14 AA teams so it could be true. The problem is that after 1st team, it gets so name driven that it isn't reliable. And name driven tends to favor the big time recruits.

 

I don't care what we're ranked... I'll settle for actually keeping guys on campus and developing depth for now.

 

Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Considering lots of kid who sign never even make it to school.

"There are what 74 on all 3 AA teams + HMs and like 14 AA teams so it could be true."

Good thought. Perhaps.

 

I have a closet full of Parade, Prep Star, SuperPrep and Bluechip publications from the 90s. They didn't use the star system, but had rankings and labels of their own.

BTW - Blake's classes weren't considered good. '98 class cracked one of the Top 25s, but that was it.

 

anybody have a short account of how the recruiting services morphed into what we have today?

 

If you want to try and pinpoint a year, you could go back to 2004. That seems to be the year that the various websites caught on. Prior to that, you could subscribe to a few services (Max Preps, Blue Chip, Superprep), and for a fee they would email you reports. Prior to that, you could either receive the same service via snail mail (which most beat writers did) or buy the annual magazines.

2004 marked the first time a recruit decision was televised live. Within two years, the Army All American Game, Marine Corp AA (now the Semper Fi) Game and Parade AA (now called the Under Armour) game started to be televised live (they had been televised previously here and there, but not live). ESPN took the lead (of the major media outlets) with live signing day coverage, and the rest is history.

Of course High School recruiting goes back many decades, and recruiting services providing information to anyone that cared to pay for it goes back to the late 60's early 70's. But it wasn't until the early to mid 2000's that it morphed into what we see today.

 

I subscribed to Bluechips one year. I think it was sometime in the 80's. The first Army All-American HS allstar game I remember seeing on TV was after the 2003 season. Adrian Peterson and Ted Ginn Jr. both played in that game, and had very good showings. I remember AD putting on the OU baseball hat, and stating he was going to play for OU.

 

Ah, so that also includes AA honorable mentions, in other words. OK, that makes sense.

LOL @ the top player going to "The University of Ole Miss." Are we doing a signing day thread, or just keeping with this one?

 

It goes back farther than that, Rivals and Scout were both doing this in 1999.

 

One of the more interesting thing about the 90's magazines were how varied they were. All 4 could cover an area and have radically divergent lists. A good example was TGRW, he was on the cover of prepstar, but wasn't even listed in the regional lists of most of the magazines. Calmus was another one that was borderline on most of the lists for the midlands. Cory Callens though was at the top of them all.

 

Plus it doesn't mean 1 in 45 for any specific year. It means 1 in 45 become AA at some point in their careers.

So to say more than one per team on average would mean more than one per team on average over a 4 or 5 year period.

 

Like I said, without knowing their criteria, its hard to say. I wouldn't be surprised if over 150 kids are considered an AA in any year. There are a TON of All American teams (AP, Walter Camp, etc) and if they include HMs that list goes way up. We've had guys be HMs that had horrible years but great reputations.