Wall Street Journal: are star rankings really that important?

good stuff

Signing Day: That Two-Star College-Football Recruit Might Become an All-Star - WSJ.com

note that the 1st Round picks consist of:
5-stars - 17.6%
4-stars - 42.1%
3-stars - 23.9%
2-stars - 16.4%

just as many 2-stars as 5-stars??? wow.

also, to add to the WSJ research, I did some research on LSU's recruiting classes using the Rivals.com rankings just like the WSJ did...

These are all the LSU players from the 2002 signing class on (when Rivals started rating recruits) that got drafted, and how they were ranked by Rivals as recruits:

[note: 7th Rd pick Matt Mauck is missing because Rivals never ranked him]

1st Round
5-stars - 1 -- P. Peterson
4-stars - 5 -- Dorsey, Russell, Landry, Bowe, Davis
3-stars - 1 -- T. Jackson
2-stars - 0

2nd Round
none

3rd Round
5-stars - 3 -- C. Jones, Doucet, Wroten
4-stars - 3 -- Ridley, Nevis, Barksdale
3-stars - 3 -- C. Jackson, K. Sheppard, LaFell
2-stars - 1 -- Hester

4th Round
5-stars - 1 -- Al Woods
4-stars 2 -- Steltz, S. Green
3-stars - 1 -- P. Riley
2-stars - 0

5th Round
5-stars - 0
4-stars - 2 -- K. Williams, H. Johnson
3-stars - 1 -- Q. Johnson
2-stars - 0 --

6th Round
5-stars - 0
4-stars - 1 -- C. Scott
3-stars - 1 -- T. Holliday
2-stars - 0

7th Round
5-stars - 0
4-stars - 3 -- D. Byrd, Jean-Francois, M. Flynn
3-stars - 3 -- L. Levingston, C. Taylor, K. Zinger
2-stars - 0

TOTAL DRAFTED
5-stars - 5 ... (16%)
4-stars - 16 ... (50%)
3-stars - 10 ... (31%)
2-stars - 1 ... (3%)

our current recruiting class per Rivals:
5-stars -- 0
4-stars -- 10
3-stars -- 11
2-stars -- 1 (deep-snapper Ferguson)

record for the most LSU signees drafted in a class from 1995-2008:
10 -- 2004 class (we have 22 signees in the class we just signed)

record for the least LSU signees drafted in a class from 1995-2008:
2 -- 2002 class (surprising Saban did so bad: Dinardo's worst class had 3 drafted)

 

It might be due to the fact that there are far less recruits rated as a five star in the first place.

 

Numbers can be toyed with.

Here is an example with FAKE numbers because I am not going to do the math, but it gets the point across:

out of 23 five star players, 4 were first round draft picks
out of 10,453 2 star players, 4 were first round draft picks

If you want to know if stars matter, simply find the average star rating of each NC over the past 10 years, and rank it. There is a direct correlation between recruiting rankings and NC's.

 

the article does point that out. eventually i'd like to go thru each of the Rival 100 lists and see what % of those guys get drafted. i bet it's not as high as you'd think

 

Correct. Maybe a analysis of what % of 5 starts were drafted compared to what % of 4 stars were drafted would be a good thing to know.

 

exactly, too many 2 and 3 stars to fairly compare to the 4 and 5 star pool.

as far winning and NCs, the biggest key is the combination of highly ranked classes and coaching. UGA is an example of a team that has high ranked classes but nothing to show for it

the only exception are Boise, TCU, etc. but that is in correlation to the very weak schedules they play every year

 

talent evaluators can not measure all attributes with stars. I seem to remember Jacob Hester saying sometning like "When you strap on your helmet in August 2-a-days, nobody cares how many stars you had."

ST

 

I swear this exact same article gets published 20 times every February. Obviously they don't matter, it's just for entertainment.

 

Stars are very important, if you know a football player when you see one. Oh, and if you can coach them up.

 

Texas gets the pick of a great state of 5* players, an how many NC's have they won?

No coaching up there?