I think you are giving them way too much credit. They are no different than these sites have ever been….just trying to sell subscriptions and get clicks. Zero actual research. You do that by catering to the biggest fanbases. And you cater to the biggest fanbases by making it appear that the players they are losing to school XYZ with a smaller fanbase isn’t really as good as originally thought, while also making it appear that the player they are gaining from school XYZ with a smaller fanbase is actually way better than previously thought.
Here are prime examples of how stupid the system is. First off, there are allegedly 6 tiers of player - Not Rated, then 1* through 5*. But if you land on a P4 roster, its evidently impossible for you to be any less than a 3*. This is crap…..it means there’s really just 3 tiers. This is dumbing down something already very complex to sell subscriptions. 1* and 2* players used to actually be a thing, and in real life they still are. They don’t account for them.
Secondly, I will give you the entire formula that they use with very few exceptions, which is pretty obvious from looking at anyone’s haul of players:
Scenario 1 - Player with average or maybe decent stats transfers up from G5 to P4. If he was unrated in HS, he enters as a 3*. If he was a 3* in HS, he bumps to a 4*. Probably very rare to find a 4* in HS that goes G5, but if you find one and he transfers up he becomes a 5*. No matter what, the player somehow gets better just by changing schools, which has NOTHING to do with how he actually performed. Do any players who don’t ever enter the portal ever get re-ranked? Hell no. So the overall rankings are going to be skewed from that.
Scenario 2 - Player transfers from lower tier P4 to higher tier / elite P4 school. Same as above. If he’s a 3* he’s getting bumped to a 4*. Low-mid 4* out of high school, he’s going to high 4* or possibly 5* at the new place. High 4* or 5* out of high school is a 5* automatically at new school. Even more stupid than scenario 1 above because it ignores the NIL effect. Big school may have lost a lot of players at a given position, and thus just need to pay up in NIL to replenish, even if it means picking up some guys that are more average than superstar.
Scenario 3 - The inverse of Scenario 1, player leaves P4 to go G5. Player gets a bump down in their rating from high school pretty much automatically. No research.
Scenario 4 - The inverse of Scenario 2, player leaves crowded depth chart at Big School for bigger role at Mid-Sized State. Again, automatic bump down. Again, makes no sense because it ignores NIL component. If OU liked Brenen Thompson in his role last year, wants him to get a small increase in snaps at least, wants to pay him $500k…..is he suddenly a worse player just because MSU wants to pay him $600k? Of course not.
Scenario 5 - You transfer within the same tier. Elite P4 to Elite P4, small/mid P4 to small/mid P4, G5 to G5. You keep your
rating.
Then, they’ll throw in the occasional oddball….just to give the illusion of some type of mysterious insight and try to give hope to the hopeless. My favorite example of that in this years transfer class is Dwight Lewis III, a 22-year old redshirt Sr from a no-name NAIA school who is allegedly a 4* talent now at MSU (LOL). Other past hilarious examples of this on the other networks were when Josh Riddell and Tyson Lee were both rated as 4* QB’s….and let’s not forget the Arizona Western DL class of 2001.
These sites all compete just to see who can find the most creative way to say that Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and Texas are the 4 best teams in the country (in some order), and that 25 or so of the 35 “most talented” teams are SEC / Big 10 schools, when nobody actually needs a subscription or a detailed ranking to know either one of those things. Tell me I’m wrong.
