Tangent Thread - Recruiting Rankings & Predictions Edition

[Enhance]

Yes, if he loves his visit Saturday it is possible. ASU is ahead right now though, so we have to wow him to get him. 

P.S. you should have just put this in his thread.

Nothing says "I'm going to enjoy playing at ASU" like their new leadership model:

The department's New Leadership Model will be similar to an NFL approach using a general manager structure. It's a collaborative approach to managing the ASU football program that includes sport and administrative divisions, which will operate as distinct, but collective units focused on elevating all aspects of Sun Devil Football. This structure will allow the department to form a multi-layered method to the talent evaluation and recruiting processes, increase its emphasis on both student-athlete and coach development and retention, and provide a boost in resource allocation and generation.

 

[husker98]

Pretty much everything in the above is either wrong or a bad idea.

Perhaps. But what is wrong and a bad idea in your opinion? 

 

[Enhance]

Also recruiting rankings are garbage

This is... wrong.

Here are some interesting numbers to chew on in regards to recruiting rankings and this year's Super Bowl. 

This is where arguments that recruiting rankings do not matter go off the rails. What people get confused are recruiting rankings on a micro level vs. recruiting rankings on a macro level. On an individual (micro) level, any player can overcome a low recruiting ranking and make the NFL. It’s a numbers game, and there are WAY more 2- and 3-star recruits than blue-chip prospects. Inevitably, players will outperform their rankings.

But on a macro level, recruiting rankings do matter. As the Super Bowl teams show,  4- or 5-star recruits outperform their overall percentages to make the NFL, and by a large amount. There is no debating that a 4- or 5-star recruit has a better shot at making the NFL than a 2- or 3-star recruit, even if there are more 2- and 3-star recruits in the NFL.

 

[NoLongerN]

Although we will never be able to compete with Herm's new NFL system (pay for play?), as long as he comes on a visit to check us all out ... I feel real good about getting him.  I think he proved at the All-Star game that how he was used benefited him.  This is how he would fit in the Frost offense perfect.  The only thing (which is a big thing) is all those ASU hotties they got.  Dang, just can't compete with that!

 

[Huskers93-97]

Although will never be able to compete with Herm's new NFL system (pay for play?), as long as he comes on a visit to check us all out ... I feel real good about getting him.  I think he proved at the All-Star game that how he was used benefited him.  This is how he would fit in the Frost offense perfect.  The only thing (which is a big thing) is all those ASU hotties they got.  Dang, just can't compete with that!

Many of those ASU hotties will give you something to carry with you your whole life. Isnt ASU STD capital of US? 

 

[RedRedJarvisRedwine]

Edit. Wrong thread

 

[husker98]

This is just... wrong.

Here are some interesting numbers to chew on in regards to recruiting rankings and this year's Super Bowl. 

Curious, I'm guessing your link is the entire roster of the patriots? Because among their starting 22 only 5 were rated a 4 star or higher. 

The majority are former three stars. Which means the rest of those other 4 and 5 star guys are sitting behind 3 star guys on the bench.

Awkward.

Off The top of my head I'm pretty there have been years, hilariously, the huskers had more 4 stars on the field then they did.

And less to show for it.

Also as a side  note former consensus nobody out of high school Josh Allen is also now considered by some a front runner to go first overall.

While 3 star, manning and media darling tanner Lee likely just threw himself out of being drafted.

Not saying they don't get it right on some kids. But often times anyone can watch the film and tell you that kid will be special. 

We need to stop pretending these stars we put on kids are infallible and truly reflective of their skill.

That's how you miss on guys like Amber Abdullah.

 

[BigRedBuster]

We need to stop pretending these stars we put on kids are infallible

Nobody is.

 

[runningblind]

Curious, I'm guessing your link is the entire roster of the patriots? Because among their starting 22 only 5 were rated a 4 star or higher. 

The majority are former three stars. Which means the rest of those other 4 and 5 star guys are sitting behind 3 star guys on the bench.

Awkward.

Off The top of my head I'm pretty there have been years, hilariously, the huskers had more 4 stars on the field then they did.

And less to show for it.

Also as a side  note former consensus nobody out of high school Josh Allen is also now considered by some a front runner to go first overall.

While 3 star, manning and media darling tanner Lee likely just threw himself out of being drafted.

Not saying they don't get it right on some kids. But often times anyone can watch the film and tell you that kid will be special. 

We need to stop pretending these stars we put on kids are infallible and truly reflective of their skill.

That's how you miss on guys like Amber Abdullah.

Obviously there has to be a balance. Recruiting only 3 stars is how you become Minnesota also.

I think coaching and work ethic prove to be of greater importance than star rating. A lot of 3 star guys, like Ameer, have giant chips on their shoulders and out work everyone else.  But if you find an occasional 5 star who wants to be coached and work that hard, that is how you get over the top.  Mixture of the two.

 

[irafreak]

Yea I'd just as soon pass on this kid. 

Anyone who is seriously considering herm Edwards U probably has issues with making educated decisions.

Also recruiting rankings are garbage and doing "ok" in an all star game does not immediately make you a guaranteed hit in college.

On a final note this is the second time recruiting topics have invaded the football forum this month. Stop it! We got a forum for that!

Herm's a pretty charismatic guy. Players love him. Nfl background...I could see a kid wanting to play for him.

 

[Enhance]

@husker98Did you read the article or the pull quote I provided? A fair portion of what you just said is contradicted by facts. I'll include the pull quote again and bold the important bit:

This is where arguments that recruiting rankings do not matter go off the rails. What people get confused are recruiting rankings on a micro level vs. recruiting rankings on a macro level. On an individual (micro) level, any player can overcome a low recruiting ranking and make the NFL. It’s a numbers game, and there are WAY more 2- and 3-star recruits than blue-chip prospects. Inevitably, players will outperform their rankings.

But on a macro level, recruiting rankings do matter. As the Super Bowl teams show,  4- or 5-star recruits outperform their overall percentages to make the NFL, and by a large amount. There is no debating that a 4- or 5-star recruit has a better shot at making the NFL than a 2- or 3-star recruit, even if there are more 2- and 3-star recruits in the NFL.

Also, "we need to stop pretending these stars we put on kids are infallible and truly reflective of their skill" is a straw man. Nobody is saying that. However, somebody (aka you) did just say recruiting rankings are "garbage," which is wholly false.

 

[Mierin]

Curious, I'm guessing your link is the entire roster of the patriots? Because among their starting 22 only 5 were rated a 4 star or higher. 

The majority are former three stars. Which means the rest of those other 4 and 5 star guys are sitting behind 3 star guys on the bench.

Awkward.

Off The top of my head I'm pretty there have been years, hilariously, the huskers had more 4 stars on the field then they did.

And less to show for it.

Also as a side  note former consensus nobody out of high school Josh Allen is also now considered by some a front runner to go first overall.

While 3 star, manning and media darling tanner Lee likely just threw himself out of being drafted.

Not saying they don't get it right on some kids. But often times anyone can watch the film and tell you that kid will be special. 

We need to stop pretending these stars we put on kids are infallible and truly reflective of their skill.

That's how you miss on guys like Amber Abdullah.

I think you may have ignored the math in the link.

There will always be plenty of 3 and 2 stars in the NFL because there are a whole lot more of them. A much higher proportion of 4 and 5 stars make it.

Here are counts for the 2018 class from SBNation using rivals rankings. Here's some math. You say 5/22 starting patriots are 4+. That's 22.7%

Using the below players who are 2 stars or higher, 11.7% are 4+ stars.

Also, I thought we were talking about college football.

Here’s how long their odds are to reach various recruiting ratings, using class of 2018 data from Rivals, if we settle on 300,000 football-playing seniors as a fair estimate:

• 33 five-stars, or 0.01 percent of the class
  
• 399 four-stars, or 0.13 percent of the class
  
• 1,409 three-stars, or 0.47 percent of the class
  
• 1,842 two-stars, or 0.61 percent of the class
  
• 296,317 unrated, or 98.77 percent of the class
  

 

[Huskers93-97]

At the end of the day the NFL does not care what "star" you are. 2,3,4,5. I bet they dont know what a star is and dont give a s#!t either. Many kids get overlooked in high school. But the cream rises to the top. So those kids that get overlooked perform in college. The NFL finds them and POOF they get drafted. Stars is not a end all be all by any means. Some kids develop late and some just work harder. I look at it like this- 5 stars appear to have all the tools and you have a higher percentage they will pan out to be a stud. So on down the line- 4 stars maybe less percentage, 3 stars even less, 2 stars even less. Now sometimes those 2 or 3 stars develop late, maybe work harder or just didnt get evaluated or whatever the reason and they are better than many 5 stars. Happens all the time. 

 

[Mavric]

A few options:

1.  Wiltfong actually has people connected to each one of the more than 200 top recruits in college football, which changes every year, but all of whom are willing to give a guy who sells recruiting information for a living the real story on what they're going to do with one of the most important decisions of their lives even though they don't know this guy and can't profit from his site.

Or

2.  Wiltfong is the man in charge of his site's accuracy numbers, he's not super carefully vetted, and he can pick and choose which predictions he uses for his accuracy rating, and he judiciously switches his "crystal ball" predictions at strategic times to keep that accuracy rate high.

Or

3.  He's perfected the art of guessing, much like a poker player, and can pretty accurately read tells from these kids based on interviews, social media posts, etc.

I'm sure there are other options.  The option I think is least likely is that he actually knows what these kids are thinking.  Some maybe tell him for whatever reason, and great, for those he actually knows. But he cannot know for all of them, nor can he have actual insider information on anything like 91% of them. So there's guesswork, or strategic switching of predictions, or some other way of hedging his bet. 

They've clearly perfected the art of guesswork to such a degree of accuracy that they can predict which team is currently "leading" for a player, they can set it up like a race, even though the kid himself may not know where he's going and/or may not have told anyone where he's going, and turn it into a soap-opera like drama with all the wavering over which team a player will pick, first this one and then that one, thus keeping people entertained without having actual factual information most of the time. 

I mean, Kim Jong Un is the world's greatest golfer.  You should see his scorecard. 

Just don't ask to check his numbers.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions to fit what you believe/want to believe. 

Wiltfong has been doing this for a long time.  It's not nearly as hard to have connections to a lot of these guys as you're trying to make it sound like.  It's call knowing who their high school coach is.  There are still quite a few of those but they don't change nearly as often as the players do.  And it's not just him tracking down all this information.  He works for a company that has hundreds of associates who all spend their entire working days finding out this information from their local school/area and passing it along.  That's hundreds of people who spend all day every day figuring these things out.  I don't think it's very far-fetched to think that they are pretty good at finding out what recruits are thinking.

Many recruits may not know 100% which college they are going to attend. But a lot of the time they are definitely more interested in 1-2 schools early on.  When I create a profile for a kid that Nebraska offers, I look at what the Crystal Ball predictions are for that kid.  If there is more than one pick (or a majority) for one school, I put in my pick on our humble little HuskerBoard Predictor to match.  I don't have the exact stats but that prediction is correct far more than it is wrong.  That's because the big-time kids from Florida often go to Florida/FSU/Miami, the big time Texas kids often go to Texas/A&M/Oklahoma and the big time California kids often go to USC/UCLA.  They're already very interested in 1-2 of those schools and there is a very good chance that's where they'll end up.  But they are going to go through the process, check out other schools and take their visits.  But a good number of times they end up at that first school they were interested in.

It is far more far-fetched to think he's manipulating the numbers.  His picks are always on display on the web page.  There are dozens of picks right now for uncommitted kids.  If there was a way to export them right now I'd see how he does the rest of the way.  Short of screen-shoting each of the 19 pages worth of picks, I don't see a way to do it.  

But I bet he'll be correct on the vast majority of them.

 

[knapplc]

I think you're making a lot of assumptions to fit what you believe/want to believe. 

I think you're taking this much seriouser than I am. 

Bottom line is, if 75% of kids don't know five months from Signing Day which school they're going to attend,  there's zero chance Wiltfong or any predictor can know where more than that number are going to go. 

So either the kids all know where they're going, they disclose it to someone, that solid information gets out to the recruiting guys and only the recruiting guys... OR they're making educated guesses and fudging the numbers to justify the percentage they claim.

These are high school kids.  We can believe they, and all of their friends, can keep a secret, or we can believe something else.