1. Alabama......311.08 2. USC..............310.44 3. FSU...............286.76 4. Tennessee...286.16 5. LSU...............285.92 6. Ohio State...279.83 7. UCLA............278.54 8. Clemson.......278.16 9. Auburn.........277.69 10. Georgia......274.98 Just to give you an idea, had LSU landed 3 star recruit Justin Reid, it would have vaulted us to #3.
Yep, and really would have been well into 3rd with Lewis. What I'm always more upset about is the total bias versus special team guys...snappers, placekickers, and punters. Ferguson is supposed to be the best long snapper and his reward...2*. Growden I think is going to be an outstanding punter and his reward 2*. Fortunately, more and more people are calling these services out for this exact matter.
The whole football world knows how important special teams are except for the recruiting services. This is an amazing class with talent that will shine brightly over many years.
Lost potential points on not only the long snapper but the Aussie punter. Like I said, the dirty little secret of ranking prospects. Some of the most important players on a football team...the long snapper, the punter, the placekicker, they don't even bother evaluating properly. Wow....just wow!!
Looking at the 247 Recruiting Rankings, the only two teams in the top 5 that took special teams players were us and Tennessee -- both took a punter and long snapper. Tennessee also took 29 players to our 25; however, FSU only took 20, Alabama only 24, USC 26. All things being equal (25 signatures, no special teams players), my gut tells me that FSU would probably have been #1 and we would have been #2.
The wonderful thing about this? It means NOTHING! Recruiting rankings are a great tool to see who's generally getting talent. But to sweat points? Meaningless. As long as we're bringing in talent and getting guys who fit our system, whether or not Rivals, Scout, etc think they're any good doesn't matter. What matters now will be how we can utilize the weapons we're bringing in. The pecking order in the recruiting rankings is a beauty pageant. An even less meaningful one than the regular season polls, at that!
People get wrapped up in stars and seem to forget or not realize that a 3* player is still probably top 5 or 600 in the country. Not too shabby
