I decided to look at some recruiting numbers last night

[Seinfeld]

in order to try to come up with some kind of system for gauging a site's ranking accuracy. There are so many variables in college football that it's nearly impossible to do this fairly, but I took a simple route. I took the last 4 years of recruiting rankings from each website, averaged them out, and then compared them to the final 2011 season standings. I then used absolute error between recruiting ranking averages and final standings in order to see who came the closest.

Anyway, without going to into much more detail, the results echo what pretty much everyone has said here... 1. Scout 2. Rivals. 3. ESPN
Truth be told, everyone missed pretty badly to some degree, but ESPN simply missed the worst.

A few other things that stood out when looking at the numbers...

The "No matter what happens, your class is awesome" teams: Notre Dame, Florida, Miami, Ohio St, UCLA, Florida St, and Texas. Honorable mention: Tennessee
The "I don't care what you do, your class sucks" teams: Oklahoma St, Boise St, Wisconsin, Michigan St, Baylor, TCU, Kansas St, WVU, Cincinnati. Honorable mention: Oregon
Biggest miss: Texas, UCLA, and Oklahoma St are up at the top, but there's no question that the biggest overall miss was Ole Miss.

 

[boatsnhoes]

no matter what we do, like you said they will rank us low. this is best class I have really ever seen since jackie days. Add to that I feel like mullen will develop it more.

Living in Texas.....they are ranked in the top three recruiting classes every single year. what have they done with it....absolutely zero. They have all kinds of talent and usually go 8-4 or so. I worry more about what nick saban will do with top recruits. AuburnI think we wash with, Georiga always has great "paper" players, LSU did ok...I wasn't blown away by their class. Florida doesn't have spurrier coaching them anymore....so far I am not real worried about what muschamp gets.

There is really not anyone we signed that I think (at this point) will not contribute. We get talented depth really quick on D-front. More talent in the secondary. Two LB's I wouldn't trade for any other two in the country. OL line help (a couple quick with JC guys) if they turn out.

I love our class....and I would put them in behind LSU/BAMA but as good or better than anyone else in SEC. We just really need some WR who can get loose from tough coverage. Our WR corp needs work. That is the only place I was dissappointed.