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Message: [QUOTE="billsin01, post: 3222609, member: 837"] Interesting article but I'm not entirely sure it's either A) a scientific study of the system used to rate kids or B) necessarily telling us anything we don't know. You or I could come up with a top 25 list of recruiting classes without looking at a thing and be pretty accurate. Take almost all of the SEC (let's say 8-9 schools), add clemson, ohio state, wisconsin, michigan, Penn state, usc, notre dame, oklahoma, Florida State, Miami and then sprinkle in a few schools that are good bets to pop up -- Oregon, Stanford and maybe a couple others and you've got your top 25. Not only is that likely the bulk of the top 25, it's also likely pretty accurate in terms of talent. However, I don't really see any evidence that improved recruiting rankings predict future success. Take Minnesota: 10-2, ranked 16th in the country. Clearly have some level of talent. Previous four recruiting classes: 46, 59, 38, 45. Now that they won 10 games? Shocker -- class ranked at 31. How about USC -- classes ranked 10-4-4-20 nationally up through 2019. The past two seasons, they have a combined 11 losses and, shocker, this year (with only 11 players signed, which I believe hurts the classes) they're ranked 78th. Further, they've never finished outside the top 20, at least going back to the early 2000s (and generally they crushed as in top 2 or 3 ranking and easily top 10) yet from '09 on they've averaged 4+ losses a year and finished outside the top 25 five times in that span. Now we'd still gladly trade results with them in that span, but they went from a team that was incredibly disappointed by two-loss seasons to a team that is averaging 4 and has had several worse seasons including a 5-7 year last season. Same goes for Texas or ND -- results have been pretty up and down, recruiting rankings remain pretty steady. For me, at the end of the day, it's likely a moot point b/c until we somehow start landing a couple handfulls of 4-stars, we're going to need to develop and coach up the talent we get. But I really feel if these things were accurate, they'd tell you that the talent was dipping at USC before a year or two before you saw the results on the field. Same thing at ND or Texas, etc. [/QUOTE]

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