Definitely not "many". A few, whose athletic departments care more about perception than results on the field.
They are absolutely meaningless internet junk. At least you finally could admit that. Just another way for companies to make money off kids who can't benefit off their own likeness. If you don't think the rankings are all about the other sites making money from the big schools I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
footballscoop.com
If these gurus are SOOOOOO poor at evaluating talent, then I suggest you get out of real estate (I'll buy that bridge if you have clear title...LOL) and START YOUR OWN SERVICE. Seems there would be a market for someone with your keen eyes and skill. Maybe even Dino would hire you.
I review engineering plans for a living. There hasn't been a document submitted to me in 30+years for review that I couldn't critique and find something that wasn't exactly right. Nothing is perfect. The services provide some value. If they are so bad, why do all the haters even read them?
I guess all the "likes" on this comment were wrongooooooo about incentives for recruiting site rankings and bonuses....lol.
I guess maybe someone ought to calm down a bit with the slamming of other posters here.
Some of the "gurus" on this board have had two hour conversations with the coaches in the hotel lobbies the night before a game.
So how did coaches recruit before the internet? Oh, the humanity! Thank god Brian Dohn and Mike Farrell came along to help coaches figure out which players were the best in the country!
I get what you are saying, but it's like what did we do before computers. Certainly we still did our jobs, but now we can do them better and faster.
I think part of the disconnect, is that when folks bust on the recruiting services, they are pointing own known discrepancies/bias/issues. While they DO get a bunch "close enough", they get a bunch wrong, too.
If you get a P5 offer, the sites tend to generically give a mid 3 star grade. See the fake recruit, I posted about. Some 4 star recruits are 3 stars, and some 3 stars are 4. I know 30+ HS players that went D1. One of the 4 stars was prolly a mid 3 star. The coaches knew it, still worth D1. Then look at Andre Cisco. Mid 3 star. He's a preseason All American. Not ACC conference all american. Straight up, best in the country, All American.. That kid was NEVER a 3 star. Andre Szmyt was never even ranked... (best kicker in the country) They get them WRONG.
You are deviating from the argument because you can't admit you are wrong. The argument was whether coaches utilize these recruiting sites to evaluate players. The answer is no. Since that has been shown to you, you are now saying they have "value." Sure they do, for entertainment purposes, for gathering intel through interviews, and for making someone money. Nobody has disputed these things. If you can just admit you're wrong about the coaches using them for evaluation purposes people will get off your back.
Your research is incomplete. Nobody has said rankings are completely meaningless. The recruiting insiders on here have pointed out, however, that it is common for a recruit's ranking to change quickly after receiving certain offers. So is it the recruiting services identifying the talent followed by the best schools snatching it up, or is it the best coaches identifying/offering talent followed by the recruiting sites taking notice and "reevaluating?"A quick look at statistical research done over the past 15 years clearly supports the value of Star rankings, even if the metric is FAR from perfect.
A study from 2013 broke the Power "6" conferences recruiting classes into accumulative star rankings from 5 star to 1-star programs. For example, FIVE star programs based on star rankings included: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Texas. SU, was listed as a ONE star program for this time period. Over the same four-year span, those 75 teams played head-to-head 1,488 times. Here are the results of those games, with winning records in black and losing records in red:
To describe those results as "compelling" would be selling them short. It's a landslide. On the final count, the higher-ranked team according to the recruiting rankings won roughly two-thirds of the time, and every "class" as a whole had a winning record against every class ranked below it every single year.
Recruiting Rankings Matter
Then there is this joker:
“It cracks me up when [people] say the ratings don’t matter,” Ohio State coach Urban Meyer told the Big Ten Network, according to 247Sports. “If they’re keeping score, we’d like to win that thing. I do look at that. The recruiting services, although they are not 100 percent correct, they’re very close. A lot of those guys that are highly-rated guys turn out to be great players.
