[CTcard]

Every time this subject comes up, somebody points to some few players who didn't get that many stars coming out of high school but became outstanding in college, as if that disproves the notion that stars have any meaning. This is not the point. The point is that a person with a higher star rating has a higher probability of success in college than one with a lower star rating. Ask recruiters if they would rather have a recruiting class filled with 4 and 5 star prospects or 2 and 3 ones. I have a feeling what most of them will tell you.

What the point is presumably depends upon the question at hand.

That five star prospects have a higher probability of being a good player than two star prospects says something to me, but not necessarily a lot. There are lots of ways to come up with a list of about 30 players that have greater than average chance of being successful. [At least Scout lists 30 5 stars for 2015 - that number varies a bit by service and year.] For a kind of stupid example, say just take the list of players signed by S.-C and Alabama.

A question is how good would the rankings have to be to be useful for a particular purpose.

For general fan tracking of recruiting they are probably pretty good, at least compared to any alternative. Otherwise to most fans the recruits are just a list of names - perhaps coupled to an Kremlinology type parsing of coaching staff effusiveness on signing day.

I would think that for something like use by a coaching staff in running their own recruiting, these rankings have rather limited use. They are fairly comprehensive, so they might be useful for a general first screening to make sure you aren't missing anybody. Otherwise, I would certainly hope that my team has a coaching staff better able to evaluate players for their particular team and needs than a generic service trying to come up with some kind of overall rating. Otherwise, I think I want a new coaching staff.

Of course there are miles of distance between these two examples. That's where we have to start thinking and get to have fun arguing.

[CTcard]

Every time this subject comes up, somebody points to some few players who didn't get that many stars coming out of high school but became outstanding in college, as if that disproves the notion that stars have any meaning. This is not the point. The point is that a person with a higher star rating has a higher probability of success in college than one with a lower star rating. Ask recruiters if they would rather have a recruiting class filled with 4 and 5 star prospects or 2 and 3 ones. I have a feeling what most of them will tell you.

What the point is presumably depends upon the question at hand.

That five star prospects have a higher probability of being a good player than two star prospects says something to me, but not necessarily a lot. There are lots of ways to come up with a list of about 30 players that have greater than average chance of being successful. [At least Scout lists 30 5 stars for 2015 - that number varies a bit by service and year.] For a kind of stupid example, say just take the list of players signed by S.-C and Alabama.

A question is how good would the rankings have to be to be useful for a particular purpose.

For general fan tracking of recruiting they are probably pretty good, at least compared to any alternative. Otherwise to most fans the recruits are just a list of names - perhaps coupled to an Kremlinology type parsing of coaching staff effusiveness on signing day.

I would think that for something like use by a coaching staff in running their own recruiting, these rankings have rather limited use. They are fairly comprehensive, so they might be useful for a general first screening to make sure you aren't missing anybody. Otherwise, I would certainly hope that my team has a coaching staff better able to evaluate players for their particular team and needs than a generic service trying to come up with some kind of overall rating. Otherwise, I think I want a new coaching staff.

Of course there are miles of distance between these two examples. That's where we have to start thinking and get to have fun arguing.