Recruit Rankings

[CajunFun]

People have often pointed out that the number of stars a recruit receives isn't important, because it is a very poor measure of the athlete.

I agree that it's not much of an indicator of your recruits, but I think it's a pretty good indicator of your recruiting. That is, you can see how well your coaches are doing in head to head recruiting efforts against your peers and those 'above' you.

So can someone give a rundown of the recruits, with the number of stars each received from the various services?

[ULGrad@HOU]

I agree Cajunfun, the stars don't mean everthing, but mean something. Stars can't be the only measure of a class, but can be used as one of the measures of a class.

[Boomer]

Just asked the same on the other Board---also what schools were in contention for their services and what kids we lost to whom!!!!

[Bandwagon King]

I agree Cajunfun, the stars don't mean everthing, but mean something. Stars can't be the only measure of a class, but can be used as one of the measures of a class.

I wish someone could explain exactly how this star ranking thing works to begin with.

I mean last year there was no way Griffen should have been listed as anything less than 4 stars & probably 5 stars. I heard he wasn't ranked because of qualifying status at the time. However, there are many kids who are ranked & never qualify then have to finish their qualification process another way. Then there are examples of kids who should be ranked way higher than they are, but because they are not prototypical to a specific position, they are downgraded, even though they are fantastic football players ( Alexander).

Then there are others who are overrated because of their age & early maturity who never get any better through their senior year of high school or college for that matter & are some times drafted into the NFL because of the situation they were fortunate enough to walk into at college ( Joe Mcnight).

[Turbine]

I saw a list the other day but I can't find it. For the reasons BWK brings up it is silly because keep in mind this is upon coming out of HS

A 5 star means he projects/predicted to go to the NFL.

I can't remember the first 4

[CajunNation]

People have often pointed out that the number of stars a recruit receives isn't important, because it is a very poor measure of the athlete.

I agree that it's not much of an indicator of your recruits, but I think it's a pretty good indicator of your recruiting. That is, you can see how well your coaches are doing in head to head recruiting efforts against your peers and those 'above' you.

So can someone give a rundown of the recruits, with the number of stars each received from the various services?

The true tell of a school's recruiting proweress is who offerred the same guys that you signed.

I can tell you, C'Fun, that using this metric over the years really showed the distance between Tech's recruiting and ours.

However, last year's class closed the gap considerably.

This year's class, for the first time in 15 or so years is of a higher quality than Tech's and is probably the best signing class in the history of UL football.

Whereas in previous years we may have signed 1 or 2 guys who held legit offers from major programs at some point, this year we have, for sure, at least 10 guys like that.


If this trend continues for a few years, I have no doubt that we will be ranked at some point and, if we schedule properly and get a little luck, could be flirting with a big-time bowl game.

[Stokes1003]

From what I've read the stars represent who is recruiting a player. Meaning if LSU, Bama, Ohio State, USC, and Notre Dame are all interested, the kid will be 5 stars.

Therefore if a kid is in a bad place grade wise and the big schools don't think he'll qualify (Griffin last year, Alex Johnson this year) he will not receive stars regardless of his ability because the big schools will pass on him.

Also, if a kid commits to a small school early on and makes it clear he is not interested in receiving other offers his stars will remain lower than if he waited till the last minute to make his decision and allowed other schools to give him offers.

This is my basic understanding of how the system works, but I'm sure there are a lot more complexities.

Bottom line is, getting kids with many stars does not necessarily mean he is more talented than other recruits, but it does mean the kid chose us over tougher competition. So while it may not be a good indicator of incoming talent, like someone said before it is a good indication of how good our staff is doing at winning the recruiting battles.

[CajunFun]

The true tell of a school's recruiting proweress is who offerred the same guys that you signed.

I can tell you, C'Fun, that using this metric over the years really showed the distance between Tech's recruiting and ours.

However, last year's class closed the gap considerably.

This year's class, for the first time in 15 or so years is of a higher quality than Tech's and is probably the best signing class in the history of UL football.

Whereas in previous years we may have signed 1 or 2 guys who held legit offers from major programs at some point, this year we have, for sure, at least 10 guys like that.


If this trend continues for a few years, I have no doubt that we will be ranked at some point and, if we schedule properly and get a little luck, could be flirting with a big-time bowl game.

We often have to take the recruit's word for who else was offering, so that's not ideal either.

My thought about the number of stars is that 2+ bring the bigger dogs sniffing, whether the kid's deserving or not.

So I guess both would be ideal, number of stars, who else recruited.

[Stokes1003]

http://www.scout.com/2/1096116.html

Here is scout's explanation. It doesn't really clarify anything, but it's something.

[RiverRanchMan]

I saw a list the other day but I can't find it. For the reasons BWK brings up it is silly because keep in mind this is upon coming out of HS

A 5 star means he projects/predicted to go to the NFL.

I can't remember the first 4

The more stars, the more likely the recruit will be drafted.

Recruiting Stars 2002-2011
& Percent drafted

★★ 4.9%
★★★ 8.1%
★★★★ 16.7%
★★★★★ 38.0%