Class of 2016 Interesting read for those anti-star ppl

[anomander]

All this proves is the predictive value of 4/5 star recruits. It still does not address the obvious bias in the system for the 2/3 star recruits, which is where we've played over the past 12 years and has been the source of about 95% of the complaints made about the star system. Jake Pickard and Steven Clark are 2 great examples from last year - did their Michigan and Florida offers, respectively, which suddenly made them jump from 2 star to 3 star recruits overnight make them any better of a prospective recruit? There's 250 4 or 5 star recruits on an annual basis, that's enough for the top 25 recruiting teams to get 10 each. You do that over 4 years, and your 2 deep is full of 4 and 5 star recruits for the most part. It's not rocket science that you should have a good team with those recruiting results.

Again you list 2 players. This works overall, not a case here or a case there. And like I said who cares how they got their rating as long as they got it? So what UF came in and Clark got 3 stars? He is still 3 stars, and fits just fine with the criteria in the article. Plus don't you think he deserves 3 stars? Obviously he's a good player or UF or Nichigsn wouldn't have got involved. There is a reason Clark and pickard had UF and Michigan offers where Anthony Guidice did not. And how doesn't it prove the rest? They had 5 different grouping, based on final ranking. The data matches up top to bottom.

I would say the 2 sides will never agree on this subject plain and simple.

The only problem is there is data that supports 1 argument, and no data for the other.

 

[tep624]

Again you list 2 players. This works overall, not a case here or a case there. And like I said who cares how they got their rating as long as they got it? So what UF came in and Clark got 3 stars? He is still 3 stars, and fits just fine with the criteria in the article. Plus don't you think he deserves 3 stars? Obviously he's a good player or UF or Nichigsn wouldn't have got involved. There is a reason Clark and pickard had UF and Michigan offers where Anthony Guidice did not. And how doesn't it prove the rest? They had 5 different grouping, based on final ranking. The data matches up top to bottom. The only problem is there is data that supports 1 argument, and no data for the other.

Is the star ranking supposed to represent an evaluation of the recruits potential at the next level or a popularity contest? Afterall, I thought the recruiting analysts who are responsible for the rankings are paid to evaluate recruits independently...

 

[anomander]

Is the star ranking supposed to represent an evaluation of the recruits potential at the next level or a popularity contest?

What does this have to do with the data provided? It's pretty indisputable.

 

[Bambrewer]

Your missing the point if Saban and a handful of people's opinions make the kids a 5 star then those are the people who will have a 5 star class. They are getting the kids they want and deciding what the rating is going to be.

 

[wfschrec]

Thats it ... I'm 30 seconds away from writing a bunch of Hadoop jobs to figure all this out ...

 

[Sudano]

To me - it's always us fans who think our coaches are somehow gaming the system (ie. better talent evaluators than everyone else) - but I'm confident that they would evaluate the 4/5 stars as such. Then it becomes id'ing the right 3 star guys that fit the system and outplay their ranking through hard work/development. That's where I think our coaches are pretty good.

We won't be nationally relevant until that momentum builds to where we are grabbing 3/4/5 star kids that fit, regularly. But you have to build to that point and momentum is a funny thing.

(Note: I do think if you hit on a 3-star QB, the job gets much easier - as the affect the game the most.)

If you really get our coaches in a locked room with truth serum they would want almost an entirely better recruiting class down to the man than we are currently getting.

 

[Sudano]

Your missing the point if Saban and a handful of people's opinions make the kids a 5 star then those are the people who will have a 5 star class. They are getting the kids they want and deciding what the rating is going to be.

They are getting the best players in the country who happen to be 5 star recruits. Not the other way around. In the end it doesn't matter because either way they are good and 5 star recruits. Even their 3 star recruits are #20-25 and not their 1-5 recruits.

 

[upperdeck]

if they want to validate the star system then go to a 10 star system and put each kid in the right bucket and then see how well the evaluators do. they question is not that they can identify the best 5% its that they put 80% of the kids in unranked and 2-3 star territory.

 

[anomander]

Your missing the point if Saban and a handful of people's opinions make the kids a 5 star then those are the people who will have a 5 star class. They are getting the kids they want and deciding what the rating is going to be.

I totally get that. The reason Saban is taking certain kids is mostly because they are the 4 and 5 star kids. No wonder they win with them?

Look at the data provided, and show show the inaccuracies.

There is a reason Saban and Alabama have won 3 straight recruiting titles as well as what is it 2 or 3 national titles, and there is a reason Syracuse has had recruiting classes in the 50's and 60's and either white knuckle it to a 6 win season, or have a injuries which lead to a 3 win season.

 

[anomander]

if they want to validate the star system then go to a 10 star system and put each kid in the right bucket and then see how well the evaluators do. they question is not that they can identify the best 5% its that they put 80% of the kids in unranked and 2-3 star territory.

The point of this thread is to show that overall recruiting rankings do matter, no matter how they came about their ranking. I'll even say the recruiting site guys follow coaches offer to end up with players final grade, but however the final ranking was made, when tallied with the rest of the class the final class ranking is a decent indicator when it comes to wins and losses. And from the data it seems the bottom 80% have been identified pretty accurately.

 

[bcubs9497]

This thread is sht. Tired of it.

 

[TheCusian]

If you really get our coaches in a locked room with truth serum they would want almost an entirely better recruiting class down to the man than we are currently getting.

Of course. There are only a handful of coaches that would say differently.

 

[anomander]

This thread is sht. Tired of it.

Don't read it then

 

[TheCusian]

I will say this. The issue of player discovery is a weak spot in the system. Same with recruiting sites running camps for pay. If it doesn't directly impact the numbers, it gives the impression that they favor certain programs or kids who participate in camps.

For example, school A is a blue blood and either gets kids already rated high OR gets their kids rated higher on coach/school reputation. School B has routinely outperformed their relative ranking. When do they start to get their kids rated higher based on reputation? Which comes first - outperforming your ranking or getting kids who were rated as players that school A offers to choose you instead?

How about scenarios like RW? How do you lose stars when no one has seen you at a paid camp in the offseason? How about those kids who don't do any camps?

I'm not saying the article is wrong; I'm not surprised there is a correlation. I'm just more convinced that the road to wins for us is unearthing kids who are not rated properly by identifying the talent early. If you hit on enough, have built something in a physical sense (facilities), culturally (family), system-wise (coaching) - you have a chance to increase the amount of kids that you have at the top of your board - or better yet - at the top of Team A's board.

 

[blizz]

Just want to point out that this is in the context of analysis at a population level. The article does a good job of explaining that there are plenty of errors at the individual level, how any one player scores on an evaluation is about as meaningful as a lottery ticket. But in the context of hundreds if not thousands of evaluations, more often than not they effectively predict the outcome. This is the same principle underlying actuarial science and fundamental analysis. You apply a set criteria to each instance and effectively score each instance, those that rate higher have a historically higher rate of success.
I don't like it, I still believe that a number of other variables can best sheer ability. Even more I hate the idea that all of this is predetermined, that it's as simple as the bigger, stronger, faster team is going to win. But I get the statistical feamework on this one and after reading the article I had a "yeah...duh!" moment.

 

[orangeinjersey]

so they are saying when you put a bunch of good players together they win? crazy! Of course the top players being put together win games. the problem is sites are seeing who offers kids and giving them a rating after they see what schools are in on them. The problem is they aren't identifying talent they are giving you a result of someone elses work. or better yet they ARE NOT identifying the under the radar kid. They are weather men. The article even said win some lose some. Take a 3 star kid and plug him into 5 star spot on the ohio team last year do they still play well? Surround a 2 star kid with great players will he play better? JJ Watt 2 stars Tom Brady unrated Arron Rodgers unrated Jordy Nelson 2 stars Leveon Bell 2 stars. The list goes on and on. Stars are meaningless

This sounds a lot like the Bill gates, Zuckerburg, Spiegal dropped out of college and became billionaires, anyone can. Its not really sound logic for dropping out of college. For every Bill Gates, there are a MILLION fry cooks.

I think once you get past the no brainer athletic freaks, i think it really is a crap shoot. You can't evaluate everyone. I think the coaches know this, and when they take a commitment its due to a number of factors. My thinking is, if I have a bunch of 2/3 star lineman on my board, all roughly 6-4 290 lbs, all rated 2 and 3 star, who do i offer/take the commitment from? The kid whose parents are 2-3 hours away, the kid who has low level P5 offers and I know will commit today, and not need to be baby sat through NSD (i.e. spending money to see them). I think there are a bunch of things the coaches value differently.

 

[Rocco]

Don't read it then

At the end of the day, both sides have their arguments, but you can't say that there aren't politics involved in the rankings. Recruits shoot up the rankings when certain schools come into play, versus the alternative.

We just have to trust that our coaches are getting kids to fit our system. No sense in dragging ass because we can't get a kid to commit over Alabama, LSU and Ohio State. They are football factories at this point, and we're not.

 

[007]

The bias in the star ranking system, including which recruits gain or lose stars, which kids commit to what football factories, is nearly irrelevant. The point some you are missing is that, regardless of whether Johnnie was given a 2 star when he was really a 3, of Joe was given a 4 star because he signed with Bama but he is really a 3, when you look at the ALL of the Johnnies and Joes over time, the 5 star classes consistently beat the 4s, and the 4s beat the 3s, and the 3s beat the 2s, and the 2s beat the 1s. This holds up over time and over the accumulative, and increasing, sample size. The rankings hold meaning, that data is conclusive, even if the system is flawed.

 

[anomander]

The bias in the star ranking system, including which recruits gain or lose stars, which kids commit to what football factories, is nearly irrelevant. The point some you are missing is that, regardless of whether Johnnie was given a 2 star when he was really a 3, of Joe was given a 4 star because he signed with Bama but he is really a 3, when you look at the ALL of the Johnnies and Joes over time, the 5 star classes consistently beat the 4s, and the 4s beat the 3s, and the 3s beat the 2s, and the 2s beat the 1s. This holds up over time and over the accumulative, and increasing, sample size. The rankings hold meaning, that data is conclusive, even if the system is flawed.

Exactly. It doesn't matter how they got the ranking in the end. What matters is those rankings match up with results. I guess we will see in a year or 2 if we are the outlier unearthing the under the radar kids.

 

[CUSU]

Yes, the rankings match up with the results. The point the people against the star system are trying to make is that the recruiting sites are essentailly just predicting team success not a recruits success.

It's easy to say Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, etc. are going to have success, thus giving most of their recruits 4 or 5 stars upon interest or commitment. The opposite happens when a player commits to a lesser school and sometimes even sees their rating go down, at best stay the same. They are saying eh, that kid committed to X program and they havent been a perrenial power, 3 star at best. When that kid could be as good as a 4 star kid who got his rating for commiting to a certain shcool. Is that always the case? No, but sometimes it is. Do their predictions hold true? Most of the time yes because they are saying these perennial powers are going to be good, but there is no way to say this individual player is better than another when they are on totally different teams etc. As a whole the perrenial powers are better, but how much of that can be correlated to indivual players star rating. I don't know, but I would wager it has more to do with the program in place and coaching.


Yes, the 4 and 5 star classes are beating the 3 and 2 star ones. 9 times out of 10 Ohio State would beat Syracuse last year, or an even higher percentage. What this analysis doesn't take into account is other factors in the whole picture of wins and losses. It is not just the players that are winning games, while they are a big part of it, a lot of it comes down to gameplanning (coaching) and player development (coaching).

These sites are just adapting to trends. Duke had 1 star rating but has done well, but as you know now they are getting all these 4 star recruits. These sites are saying, Duke has turned it around we better give their players better ratings. I would have to look at things much closer, but it is my gut feeling on the whole thing.

 

[Louie and Bouie]

Interestingly, our one star status was achieved during the Marrone recruiting era when the study was done (2010-2013). The last two classes under HCSS would be in the 2-star/3-star team grouping and those are a lot of our peer recruiting group at this time.

Also of note to those that agree with this statistical analysis, is that 3-star programs (based on recruiting) had a 4 - year average winning percentage of .495. Thus, if you buy into this article than any year for our program at .500 would be right where we should be according to the chart at the bottom.

So those that clamor for 8 and 9 win seasons are the statistical outlier fans and not those that believe 6 wins and a bowl game are reasonable outcomes.

At least that's one way you could look at the numbers.

 

[anomander]

These sites are just adapting to trends. Duke had 1 star rating but has done well, but as you know now they are getting all these 4 star recruits. These sites are saying, Duke has turned it around we better give their players better ratings. I would have to look at things much closer, but it is my gut feeling on the whole thing.

The guys Duke have picked up this year had their ranking, to a man, before they committed to Duke. No conspiracy theory there. It will be interesting to see if they start posting 10 win seasons on the regular. They seemingly have the staff in place, and now the talent looks to be on the way. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

 

[CUSU]

The guys Duke have picked up this year had their ranking, to a man, before they committed to Duke. No conspiracy theory there. It will be interesting to see if they start posting 10 win seasons on the regular. They seemingly have the staff in place, and now the talent looks to be on the way. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

But what were their offers/interests prior to committing to Duke?

Yes, will be interesting to see how they fare the next few seasons.

 

[anomander]

But what were their offers/interests prior to committing to Duke? Yes, will be interesting to see how they fare the next few seasons.

They all had pretty extensive offer lists. For example Quansah, picked up most of his offers after last years evaluation period.

 

[CUSU]

They all had pretty extensive offer lists. For example Quansah, picked up most of his offers after last years evaluation period.

I wonder when his stars came in relation to offers. It's impossible to look back now, but would be interesting.