It’s Still Just a Ranking!
February 5th, 2010 - byNational Signing Day has come and gone, but the ramifications from this week will be felt for years. The important thing to remember is that no one will be able to tell what kind of an impact these recruits will make until they actually step on to the field. In many cases it will take years of development before anyone can tell who actually “won” Signing Day.
However, that never stops every news organization (including NCSA) from making snap judgments awarding National Championships 4 years in the future, and pronouncing coaches fired. The Sporting Blog presented their tongue in cheek, Recruiting Classes that Will Spell DOOM for FOREVER!
3. Minnesota. Like our upcoming #1 school of DOOM, the entire point of Minnesota’s head coach is that he can recruit, and he can’t even do that, really. Minnesota pulled in two-four star recruits, suffered through eleven decommitments, and failed to get Seantrel Henderson despite offering his extremely marginal best friend JD Pride.
2. Miami. A Miami class with 28 commitments in it that has two more four stars than two stars is mindblowing, even given the ‘Canes current middling status. Making things worse are the classes of Miami’s two primary in-state rivals, which owned.
Miami picked up one top 100 recruit. It is in Florida. This is a very bad sign. Even worse: Baylor(!) is a notch ahead of them in star average on Rivals.
1. Illinois. Doctor Saturday covered this in detail today. In sum: this is Zook’s worst class ever, with one four star, and his best class ever just exited stage right without a bowl bid. Rivals has them 70th, 8th in the Big Ten. If Zook couldn’t hack it with actual talent, what’s he going to do with these guys? Probably watch them on TV after he gets fired.
Maybe these classes will eventually be proven sub-par, but that judgment is still years away. UCONN Coach Dan Edsall offers a dose of sanity.
“It’s all very stupid, in my opinion,” he said. “For anyone to go out and rank classes, and to evaluate thousands and thousands and thousands of kids that are 17 and 18 years old, and think they’re going to watch all this film and put a ranking on them, it’s propaganda. And it’s one of the things that’s ruining the game, in my opinion.”
“It’s ruining kids. I just hope some people come to their senses soon and does something about the recruiting process because we’re in this to help young people and this process isn’t helping young people. It’s hurting them.”
Schools like Wisconsin, Cincinnati, Boise State, Utah and numerous others have all gone to BCS Bowl Games with recruiting classes that were laughed at by the “experts.”
Why do I raise these points when even NCSA ranks the top players in America? Recruits need to understand that the only evaluation that really matters is the one they get from college coaches. NCSA uses our relationships with college coaches to ensure student-athletes get evaluated by coaching staffs at schools big and small across the country. We use our recruiting experts to analyze recruits and then introduce them to a variety of schools so they can be evaluated in the only meaningful way; by a College Coach.
