Someone should do a comprehensive blog that checks how recruiting websites(i.e. Rivals,Scout etc.) fare by comparing how recruits were ranked out of high school to their actual performance in college. Of course injuries should be taken into account.It could even be broken down by conference or region to see who is more accurate where.It may even eventually be a recruiting website itself.The site would probably get alot of hits. Whatya think? :wink:
Not a bad idea. There are posters who follow this info...just have to get to know who they are and look for their posts. Personally, I see Rivals and Scout on two different levels. Scout, at least as far as Bama is concerned, does a good job of covering stories about current players. Rivals, on the other hand, does a better job of covering the recruiting front. I don't know if LSU has a site that is comparable with Tiderinsider. The owner of that site is one of the hardest working guys on the recruiting front.
With the lauch of ESPN's sites, an an investment just North of $4M into a recruiting database, and a rating process completely different than Scout and Rivals, I expect the evaluations to become more accurate. It will still take a few years but I have a feeling we'll still be playing football by then.
The problem with Rivals' database is it doesn't go back past 2002. So, at this point, there's only a couple of classes where you can check to see where they were drafted at compared to their stars out of highschool. I don't know how far back Scout's goes. I'm not sure if this is true, but I've also heard that Rivals has gone back & altered old recruits' stars to make it appear as though they were more accurate. Scout did their own comparison of what the guys were ranked to where they were drafted at. It was an okay prediction. Although Rivals gets much more credit for accurate rankings, I've heard that Scout's actually compare more favorably with the draft. This may be because Scout gives out more 5 stars.
It would also be interesting to see a charting of school recruiting rankings vs success on the field. This is difficult though, since 4-5 classes make up the roster & each recruiting class could be wildly different in terms of the talent make-up.
I hear a lot of people complaining that the sites are biased towards Bama. They say that Bama recruits are getting pumped up while other teams' recruits, especially ours, are getting downplayed. I say GREAT! It does not help Bama at all to have overrated recruits. A big, fake, high rating just means that those guys are going to disappoint. If they're disappointing, then the result will be like Notre Dame. "How do we get these terrible results with such highly rated recruiting classes?" Answer: your recruiting classes weren't that great to begin with, and their inaccurate ratings gave you false hope. Overrating Bama's recruits will hurt Bama and the new coaching staff in the long run.
There's no bias against LSU recruits, although Louisiana players in general don't receive the attention they should. On the other hand, great recruits want to join other great recruits. If they look at Rivals & it appears that Alabama is doing an amazing job of recruiting, then they will want to get on board - in which case, perception actually becomes reality.
Along with what Parso said, this theory falls apart if you think that coaches rely on Rivals rankings to determine how they evaluate how good a player is going to be. Shannon Terry is the CEO. IF you are insinuating this would have a bearing on how they rank recruits... Parso Scout only goes back to '02 as well. I think they do this only because those '02 recruits are still playing as compared to most of the '01 guys don't have any eligibility left.
I don't think he's saying that coaches rely on the Rivals rankings to evaluate talent. He's saying that they do their own talent evaluations but aren't getting the best talent, even in their own eyes, yet Rivals says they are. We've had this discussion before & I absolutely believe that Rivals purposely overrates Bama recruits. Their CEO is only one of the reasons. I don't know about Scout, but I believe the reason Rivals doesn't go back before '02 is because they were bought by a different company at that point. Scout may do it just because they don't want to be the lone source for recruiting rankigns pre-'02.
