Sidebar recruiting thread...

[chew1095]

How subjective are stars and recruiting rankings? Here are the top ten classes (according to Scout) for 2007, 2008 and 2009:

2007:
1. Florida
2. USC
3. Texas
4. Tennessee
5. LSU
6. Auburn
7. South Carolina
8. Pitt.
9. Oregon
10. Michigan

2008:
1. Alabama
2. Notre Dame
3. Miami
4. Ohio State
5. Georgia
6. Michigan
7. LSU
8. Florida State
9. USC
10. UCLA

2009:
1. Ohio State
2. Alabama
3. LSU
4. Georgia
5. UCLA
6. UNC
7. Texas
8. Tennessee
9. USC
10. Oklahoma

Here are the ten schools playing in BCS games this year:
Auburn - only one top 10 class during this time span
Oregon - only one top 10 class during this time span
Ohio State
Arkansas - no top 10 classes during this time span
Wisconsin - no top 10 classes during this time span
TCU - no top 10 classes during this time span
UCONN - no top 10 classes during this time span
OU - only one top 10 class during this time span
Stanford - no top 10 classes during this time span
Virginia Tech - no top 10 classes during this time span</p>

 

[TheStateUofMS]

Well, to start off, alot of highly touted players are not going to pan out. That's just how it is. And it's also the other way around. Many of our best players were 2 and 3 stars. So it goes both ways. Personally, when Crooms was here I was all about the stars because I knew how incompetent he was as a head coach and he needed all the top players he could get. With this current staff I trust their talent evaluation and their development of players. Good coaching will take you further with mediocre or average rated recruits over a class full of 4 and 5 stars with subpar coaching. I think a good example of this is Dan Mullen right now. He's maximized his players talent. A poor example could be Rich Rod at Michigan. His classes have been good to great and he hasn't had much success up there. People like Saban who get all the blue chippers and have good coaching make it look like you can only win and compete for championships with the best players. Coaching gets over looked sometimes with all these highly rated recruiting classes. I think if Mullen can consistently get top 20 classes, we can compete for the SECW. If somehow he could reel off some classes like O had, then we definitely could compete for the SECW and NC. BUT, Mullen has shown he wants MS players and although MS has good to great HS talent, the recruiting stars won't be there, so I would be shocked if we ever had a top ten rated class unless we get everyone in the top 15 in MS and that's not going to happen. Next year would be a chance to do that if we could land Channing Ward, Quay Evans, Xavier Grindle, Anthony Alford, and there will be more blue chippers. Bottom line, coaching is more important than landing top 10 recruiting classes to compete. Look at Cincy when Kelly was there. Not one good class and they were really good. He leaves and they aren't very good.

 

[Todd4State]

It's all subjective, first of all. I don't really trust the guys that rate these players, and they probably know little more than the average Joe about rating talent.

That said, the guys that rate these players aren't totally stupid either. As Uncle Jed once said about betting on horses- "I just pick the one that looks the fastest." I think that applies to this to an extent.

There are a lot of great players that were highly rated out of high school- Norwood, AD, Sherrod, and Pegues just to name a few.

I think people have to understand that stars aren't an end all be all either though. I have heard that some sites use the amount of offers that a player has as a way to rate them, well if a guy like Templeton Hardy makes up about 20 offers, well then he becomes a four star guy. Most have people that are "experts"- like Rosebowl and Yancy (comforting, huh?) that rate these players.

But the thing that people have to understand about Mississippi is that it is still a very rural state, and because of that there are players that are pretty good that no one talks about just because they aren't known. A guy at Madison Central, South Panola, Meridian, Tupelo, etc. are all going to get noticed because those are big name teams from large areas population wise. I would imagine that these players are sometime pimped up because if pimp a guy like Chris Garrett, you sell subscriptions to people in Tupelo that want to follow the "next MSU/UM QB" from his high school days on. People can go see these guys play on Friday and then go to a message board and talk about it. I do it myself. And some of those players are legit- the Singleton's, Brassell's, etc. But if those guys played for D'Lo High School and no one knows who they are, and a coach from MSU or wherever signs them, then they would probably be two star guys just because no one knows about them.We see that from guys like Benardrick McKinney at Rosa Fort and Jonathan Banks when he was at East Webster.

And then you have guys like Justin Malone from MRA that come out of nowhere because they didn't play football until they were a senior.

So, I look at stars, but they're not an end all be all. I also watch their film and occasionally watch the player play a game and judge for myself. And honestly, I'm just as excited about Justin Cox as I am about Brassell or Tobias.

 

[Todd4State]

Bring in good coaches and good players and you win. If you have a bad coach, you better have great players. If you have bad players, you better have a good coach.

As far as Rich Rodriguez- I think he has failed because he failed to adapt his offense to his personnel at Michigan. As a result he has two losing seasons, and he spent his first two recruiting classes focusing on offense, and now he has the personnel to do what he wants, but now he has a crappy defense. And as a result he is crying for his job and quoting Josh Groban.

He did well at West Virginia, but when he got there he had personnel that fit what he wanted to do from day one and it worked out a lot better.

Not adjusting his scheme to his players also cost Urban Meyer his job this year as well. Also is one of the many things that cost Croom his job at MSU.

 

[RonnyAtmosphere]

..if you want to know how subjective stars are, look @ how these teams did this year with all the upper classmen they had fromtheir top 42007 recruiting classes:

2007:
1. Florida
2. USC
3. Texas
4. Tennessee

All these teams sucked this year.

MSU's very lowly rated 2007 recruiting class had Relf, Sherrod & Wright in it. And that 2007 MSU class finished with a better record than these 4 teamswho boasted thetop 4 recruiting classes in the nation for the year 2007.

So to answer your question: Stars are not only subjective, they are a scam used to sell recruiting propaganda to schools who have the sheep willing to believe this stars ********.