• The KillerFrogs

2020 Recruiting Thread

Eight

Eight

Member
Moose Stuff said:


For all you “stars don’t matter” folks. Yeah, there are exceptions but you get the point.
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no doubt they matter, but what happens when the rating services don't give kids the ratings they merit for whatever reason.

somehow the fourth best running back in texas in 2019 was only a 3-star recruit and the third best running back in texas wasn't a 4-star until the last rating even though he killed it for three years in wichita falls.

don't even get me started on andrew coker and the offensive tackle out of ft bend dulles.
 
M

Moose Stuff

Active Member
Eight said:
no doubt they matter, but what happens when the rating services don't give kids the ratings they merit for whatever reason.

somehow the fourth best running back in texas in 2019 was only a 3-star recruit and the third best running back in texas wasn't a 4-star until the last rating even though he killed it for three years in wichita falls.

don't even get me started on andrew coker and the offensive tackle out of ft bend dulles.
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None of that was part of my point. I’m not even remotely trying to portray the services as somehow infallible. Just pointing out the VAST VAST majority of the time the teams that win big on the field also won big on the recruiting trail.
 
Eight

Eight

Member
Moose Stuff said:
None of that was part of my point. I’m not even remotely trying to portray the services as somehow infallible. Just pointing out the VAST VAST majority of the time the teams that win big on the field also won big on the recruiting trail.
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no disagreement that talent matters and overall the higher rated recruits have the highest upside.

the rating system has flaws and some bias.

the media runs with those ratings and trumpets these stories and it does influence some recruits.

i merely pointed to two kids tcu signed last year that were highly under rated for no logical reasons.
 
M

Moose Stuff

Active Member
Eight said:
no disagreement that talent matters and overall the higher rated recruits have the highest upside.

the rating system has flaws and some bias.

the media runs with those ratings and trumpets these stories and it does influence some recruits.

i merely pointed to two kids tcu signed last year that were highly under rated for no logical reasons.
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I understand your point completely (and don’t disagree with it). Just don’t see how it relates to mine. Seems like every time this discussion pops up there are always people that post a “but.......” type response. There is no “but”. With unbelievably few exceptions (2014 TCU among them) the teams that win also killed it in recruiting. Any response to that that starts with “but” is a different discussion .
 
Froggish

Froggish

Active Member
Moose Stuff said:
None of that was part of my point. I’m not even remotely trying to portray the services as somehow infallible. Just pointing out the VAST VAST majority of the time the teams that win big on the field also won big on the recruiting trail.
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The correlation exists whether people want to recognize it or not...If your not recruiting in the top 20 year after year (even by a flawed metric) your praying for plenty of breaks to go your way to break into championship conversations..
 
CountryFrog

CountryFrog

Active Member
The issue with recruiting rankings is the process of the "evaluations." The overwhelming majority of the people creating these rankings aren't actual football talent evaluators. If they were then they'd have actual meaningful jobs evaluating football talent. So what it seems like you get is a conglomerate of offer lists, standouts at camps, and word of mouth that play a bigger factor than anything else. And even if you did have the best football talent evaluators in the world looking at this, it's pretty much impossible to accurately evaluate and project EVERY high school prospect in the country. If nothing else, there simply aren't enough hours in the day to do it properly with that volume of work.

In the macro, these recruiting services get a lot of things right. But it also doesn't take an expert to know that Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, and Ohio St are getting crazy amounts of talent. So when in doubt, if those schools want a player just assume the player is really good and you'll come out on the right side most of the time. The issues with recruiting rankings are in the micro where they get a lot of these kids' individual rankings very wrong because of everything I said in the first paragraph.

That being said, they do a reasonably good job for what they have to work with and the challenges of the job. I think it's incumbent on fans to view the rankings for what they are - entertainment. That doesn't mean they can't be a decent gauge, but the fact is there's no actual market for doing this stuff outside of entertaining fans. So while they're right about a lot, you can't look at any one player and make a determination about that player based on a recruiting ranking.
 
Froggish

Froggish

Active Member
CountryFrog said:
The issue with recruiting rankings is the process of the "evaluations." The overwhelming majority of the people creating these rankings aren't actual football talent evaluators. If they were then they'd have actual meaningful jobs evaluating football talent. So what it seems like you get is a conglomerate of offer lists, standouts at camps, and word of mouth that play a bigger factor than anything else. And even if you did have the best football talent evaluators in the world looking at this, it's pretty much impossible to accurately evaluate and project EVERY high school prospect in the country. If nothing else, there simply aren't enough hours in the day to do it properly with that volume of work.

In the macro, these recruiting services get a lot of things right. But it also doesn't take an expert to know that Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, and Ohio St are getting crazy amounts of talent. So when in doubt, if those schools want a player just assume the player is really good and you'll come out on the right side most of the time. The issues with recruiting rankings are in the micro where they get a lot of these kids' individual rankings very wrong because of everything I said in the first paragraph.

That being said, they do a reasonably good job for what they have to work with and the challenges of the job. I think it's incumbent on fans to view the rankings for what they are - entertainment. That doesn't mean they can't be a decent gauge, but the fact is there's no actual market for doing this stuff outside of entertaining fans. So while they're right about a lot, you can't look at any one player and make a determination about that player based on a recruiting ranking.
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I agree with you but I will say that if you see the rankings as less about an absolute predictor of success and more about a reflection of physical ability, the ranking get a little more palatable.

With all of the elite camps, training services, and college camps, it doesn’t take a genius to see who’s bigger, faster, and stronger than their peers. In the end, those are the kids getting 5 and 4 stars. We like to obsess as a fan base over the things like speed, heart, smarts, and football instincts, because those are often the guys we are landing. It makes us feel better about our classes. In the end it’s still a game about physical ability and every coach in the country wants the best combination of biggest, strongest, and fastest they can get....It just so happens to be that the schools landing the Biggest, Strongest, and fastest players are the teams that consistently contend for titles every year... Shocker
 
CountryFrog

CountryFrog

Active Member
Froggish said:
I agree with you but I will say that if you see the rankings as less about an absolute predictor of success and more about a reflection of physical ability, the ranking get a little more palatable.

With all of the elite camps, training services, and college camps, it doesn’t take a genius to see who’s bigger, faster, and stronger than their peers. In the end, those are the kids getting 5 and 4 stars. We like to obsess as a fan base over the things like speed, heart, smarts, and football instincts, because those are often the guys we are landing. It makes us feel better about our classes. In the end it’s still a game about physical ability and every coach in the country wants the best combination of biggest, strongest, and fastest they can get....It just so happens to be that the schools landing the Biggest, Strongest, and fastest players are the teams that consistently contend for titles every year... Shocker
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I do agree that the recruiting services do a good job of identifying raw physical size and athleticism because that's very easy. My whole point is just that these are not people (generally speaking) who are actually good at evaluating football players. When you combine that with the fact that it's really hard for people who actually are good at evaluating football players to do it correctly and the massive volume of players out there to be evaluated, they end up missing on a lot of players.

It's a process with a lot of flaws in it when you just look at individual player evaluations. I know who the teams are out there with an insane amount of talent so these recruiting services aren't really solving some great mystery when they proclaim that Alabama just signed bunches of great talent every year. We all know that.
 
Eight

Eight

Member
i think overall the recruiting rankings in the case of large numbers are accurate.

the problem is that we all know there are a number of kids who for a variety of reasons get overlooked or under rated.

we have also seen a recent bias in the criteria as a result of the early signing date. take for example hookfin and andrew coker.

neither player signed at the early date. coker was waiting to make sure tcu was the place for him and hookfin really didn't get much attention until his senior season.

remember that hookfin was a mult-year starting offensive tackle for a large, well known high school in a highly recruited suburb of houston so he didn't come out of nowhere.

he simply got better, but so did andrew coker and coker came out of high school with an nfl type frame while hookfin needed to gain weight.

the biggest difference it seemed the drove hookfin to the 4-star rating was all the attention he got late, but did he get the attention because he was that good or all the other offensive tackles of note had signed?

we saw the same thing with the linebacker out of virginia who goes from having no rating to a top-25 in the nation at his position.

why does it matter? in regards to the accuracy of a large numbers perspective it does, but what is does do is either inflate or deflate class ratings which impacts the message delivered by media outlets suchs as espn, multiple schools hammer the message to recruits that the best want to play with the best and the class rankings matter, and friends i have who coach in high school have mentioned their kids are aware of the class rankings.
 
CountryFrog

CountryFrog

Active Member
The unique thing about recruiting rankings is that they are one of the very very few things in sports that are subjective but are basically accepted by the vast majority of people as factual. Pretty much everything in sports is up for debate, but because just about everyone is completely ignorant of at least 99.9% of the HS football players out there, then we simply don't have any ammunition to challenge recruiting services on their rankings.

Pretty much no one actually looks at a NFL teams draft grades or free agency grades as an actual data point for how good the team is. They're just entertaining off-season talking points to fill air.
 
PhillyFrog

PhillyFrog

Active Member
I agree with a lot of what's been said about the starsies stuff above.

If Gary puts together a team over the next few years which halts and catches fire like that 2014 squad did, then I would like to think that the Committee would give him the benefit of the doubt and pass him into the final four.

I don't believe they'd have given Art Briles the same respect.

And, it pisses me off beyond recognition that THIS is the year we don't have a decent quarterback. That's really all we lack.

Damn it all.
 
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