What do you think? | Syracusefan.com

What do you think?

BillSU

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Star search — who determines star rankings and what do they really mean? - Deseret News

Don’t judge a book by its cover…or a recruits star or non - star evaluation from 247Sports or Rivals.

And, don’t judge a recruit, a WR, QB, LB by your pre conceived conclusions about height, weight, size and speed – although speed is very important. And, a recruit who the top scouting programs give no stars is important. Under the radar players, if you will.

We glide through the off season offering high school players we think will be a valuable asset to our program. Who is better than the other and how did they get the stars they have?

The process may be subjective and even arbitrary, but signing stars are seen by fans as the gold standard for a college football program, and that makes the people awarding those stars some of the most powerful influencers in the game.

I wanted to look at how the main recruiting programs go about giving stars to players and how the system operates.

247Sports and Rivals the two rating systems, put most, if not all, of their emphasis rating 5,000 players on camps held throughout the year across the country. IF you have talent and money, get to as many camps as you can. It’s where the scouts will be looking at your potential, future star value.

A five-star ranking for a high school football player doesn’t come by accident. It doesn’t come from playing in the fall either. Most of those determinations are done long before two-a-day workouts and way before a player’s senior year.

“As you look at our database, we have 60 eighth-graders with offers and double that for freshman and it just goes up from there,” said Adam Gorney of Rivals. “I live in California where almost every high-level high school program has a recruiting coordinator. They have a list of 25 kids and make sure those kids get to camps. We attend camps every week to watch them.”

It seems the opportunity also favors those who can afford to attend the camps. Kids at the camps get the stars and, in most cases, the scholarships.


There are exceptions. BYU’S Payton Wilgar is one of them.

The sophomore linebacker out of St. George arrived at BYU without a scholarship. He was a star at Dixie High, but because money was tight, and he didn’t attend any camps and without any recruiting stars, he didn’t get a single offer — not even from the Cougars.

“Certainly, there are those that slip through the cracks,” Gorney said. “We’ve hit on a lot of guys, and we have missed on some. Trying to project the future is challenging.” Wilgar turned a walk-on season into a scholarship and his head coach thinks he will play in the NFL when his BYU career is over.

247Sports.com is owned by Paramount, which owns CBS Sports. The company bought the recruiting service outright in 2015 after three years of a content-sharing partnership. It added some muscle by purchasing the competing At their request, this network is being blocked from this site. in 2017.

began its recruiting service in 1998 and was purchased by AllianceSports in 2001. Rivals former boss, Jim Heckman, left the company to start a competing network, The Insiders, which was later renamed At their request, this network is being blocked from this site. which does not exist.

Yahoo! Inc. purchased in 2007 for an estimated $100 million.

While top programs like Alabama and Georgia fight over high school football’s biggest stars, Rivals and 247Sports also square off over awarding the stars.

“At 247 we use a team of evaluators,” Hansen said. “They review film of every player before they extend a rating. Local and regional evaluations go to our national (nine member) committee, and they determine who gets a star and how many; 247 tries to evaluate on NFL potential, not college potential.”

“A five-star is someone we project to be an immediate contributor in college and a potential first round NFL draft pick,” Gorney said. “A four-star will be an immediate contributor and big-time player in the program and will be between a second- and fifth-round draft pick.”

Brandon Huffman has been evaluating high school players for 20 years. He is 247Sports’ national recruiting editor and sits on its nine-person committee, which assigns stars and also defends them.

“We are basically betting on the physical and mental development of these kids and how they will project as a potential NFL player four or five years later,” Huffman said. “We have made a lot them household names in our daily coverage. Some have handled it well and some haven’t. It’s a projection and you are blindly doing it with no understanding of how this player is going to develop. But it’s an ongoing projection that can change as they grow older.”


There are an estimated 16,000 high school football teams in the United States. That translates to about 16,000 quarterbacks every year and even more receivers, running backs and linemen with just 14 people (nine from 247Sports and five from Rivals) to determine each player’s star value. Their power and influence are almost out of this world. And, while none of them are astronomers, they are, in their own way, a little like Galileo looking through various lenses trying to identify what’s out there.
 
basically, unless you play for an elite team, you only get evaluated if you get to camps and they dont watch game film for 99% of the guys either.
 
basically, unless you play for an elite team, you only get evaluated if you get to camps and they don't watch game film for 99% of the guys either.
Well anyone who has followed recruiting knows for a fact there is a causal effect on player rankings depending on who offers and when they offer. Every year you see kids later in the recruiting cycle get bumped up because a power program offered. Doesn't change the prospect one bit from the day before that offer to the day after. And for the non 4-5 stars, it's highly, highly subjective.

It's also important to note that, self-admittedly, the sites are grading based on NFL potential, so if you run a college based system and recruits system kids, they may be great fits for your system and very successful college players that will be very low rated recruits.

That's why I've always valued offers more than evaluations. I get that kids/coaches can lie about offers but that usually vets itself out later in the recruiting cycle when they're claiming 5 power program offers and commit to a MAC school.
 
well thats all i needed to read to see our 14th-in-ACC recruiting class is actually better than we think!!
 

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