What do stars account for? From what I've seen- Athletic ability, measurements, judgement of future skill set, on-field abilities.
Stars do not account for intelligence, work ethic, determination, commitment.
Shamarko may have been undersized, but 2 stars could not measure his drive to help his family or his passion for getting stronger. That helped make him a great player as much as natural athletic ability.
I'd argue stars don't even account for those attributes in a very meaningful way. I mean, let's take a look at the top 7 factors that make ranking recruits such an insanely difficult, I'd even argue impossible process:
1. The sheer number of kids. Let's say there are 100 D1 schools (I know there are more but I'm not real strong with math, so I'm making it easy), then that's roughly 2000 kids/year getting DI schollies. The number considered for DI schollies probably is at least 50% greater than that, let's say ~3,000. Even for the BCS type scools, let's call it 50, then you're looking at 1000 kids and probably close to that many considered but not offered. How does any service truly evaluate that many kids across the nation each year and then slot them accordingly? You'd literally need a team of at least 50-75 scouts/writers ... which brings us to our next point.
2. The complete subjectivity of any ranking system. You see this in the NFL where each team gets basically the same money and the same access to talent and yet some teams continually win 10+ games while others -- like my loveable loser Bills -- struggle to get to 8. Obviously some people are better judges of talent than others. This is even more pronounced when you have a team of mostly minimally paid, young kids doing a job for which they've received minimal training. If I watch a film and then hand it to someone else on this board, chances are we'll 'grade' it much differently.
3. Attitude/work ethic/maturity/drive/determination. Whatever you want to call it, there are HUGE differences between kids who come in and work extremely hard, vs. kids who want to have a good time. Hard to know this without actually knowing the kid personally, which goes back to the sheer numbers of kids recruited.
4. Injuries/off-field issues. You can sign the next Randy Moss, but if he ends up being the next Randy Moss, he may still never play for your team.
5. Regional biases. Everyone knows the best players come from football states in the southeast and west coast and maybe pockets of the mid-west/PA. But you can find Morlon Greenwood on Long Island or Derrell Smith in Delaware or Duke Pettijohn in MA or Alec Lemon in Maryland or Will Allen in Syracuse ... point is that most kids in FLA are going to get more love than kids in upstate NY or Mass or wherever. That may make some sense in the way that you're going to get lots of good players from FLA each year, but in a micro view comparing one player from upstate to one player from FLA, it's pretty hard to tell assuming they have similar measureables.
6. Numbers. Everyone loves signing day b/c you potentially land all these 'difference makers', but arguably attrition rates are as big a factor as any in determining successful programs from struggling programs. Yes, I know talent is a huge factor, but teams that can consistently run close to that 85-man roster number are generally pretty competitive and teams that have a host of injuries/off-field/transfer issues find it difficult to compete. It sounds nuts, but in this class alone there are already, apparently, 4 academic issues, which means there's no guarantee those kids every set foot in upstate NY. Then you've got the inevitable injury issues that can ruin a career -- Jermaine Pierce, Flemming, etc. -- if you add in a couple disciplinary/grade issues and a couple guys that don't pan out, this class could look a lot different a year or two from now. It can also go the other way, obviously, and you get a good number of kids that pan out/stay eligible/avoid serious injury. Hard to know.
7. Coaching. Can't replace talent, obviously, but anyone want to take a guess at how many games we'd win with four groups like this one and our boy GRob at the helm?
Anyway, this is a long way of getting around to the simple point that you'd obviously rather sign a bunch of highly regarded kids than a bunch of lightly regarded kids, it's extremely difficult to really know on signing day just how good a class is, especially relative to your conference foes. My feeling is you've got to trust the staff's ability to identify and land players it thinks can succeed and then hope to God most of them show up and stay for 3, 4 or 5 years.
