Bumped from the diaries...

Something many fans (including this one) find frustrating is the importance of rankings in college football.  The end of the season rankings have determined national championships in college football forever.  In 1994, the shaky logic of those rankings (Tom Osborne's a good guy, so let's make sure he gets a championship) cost an undefeated Penn State team a national championship of our own. Even in today's BCS world, rankings still help to determine who gets to play for the national championship. And while the implications of year-end rankings annoy me, I'm equally disturbed by preseason rankings. (It's 2007, I haven't seen any team play, but hey, they're Michigan, so they've gotta be in the top 5, right?) I really dislike the fact that, even though no one has seen any team play anything more than a scrimmage, the stage gets set for the rankings for the rest of season. At least the BCS rankings don't come out for a number of weeks.

Although I'm no fan of pre-season and post-season (and hey, why not, mid-season) rankings, I generally regard them as a necessary evil.  I'll even admit that for as long as I can remember, I've gotten excited to read SI's preseason college football issue, to see where the "experts" have everybody positioned.

But now, in the internet age, the most-recent rankings are also the silliest, most over-analyzed piece of trash that sullies today's otherwise enjoyable discussions.  Of course, I'm referring to recruiting rankings.

Recruiting rankings are silly for fifty different reasons.  Despite the fact that people with more statistical acumen than me can come up with various records "proving" the accuracy of the rankings, ranking recruits is bunk. I think the most convincing--and timely--way to illustrate why no one should put too much stock in the dubious logic of college football recruiting rankings is the difficulty that the NFL has in determining the ability of prospects, despite having considerably more resources.  

The story in yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the Steeler's relative ability to perform well in the draft remind me of how poor the NFL is at evaluating talent... http://postgazette.com/pg/08115/876100-66.stm
"Just consider the No. 1 overall picks in the NFL draft the past 10 years. Of those, one is already out of the league (Tim Couch), another might never return (Michael Vick) and two are with different teams (Courtney Brown, David Carr). That doesn't even include quarterback Alex Smith of the San Francisco 49ers, who is still trying to determine the path on which he will embark.
That's half of the past 10 overall No. 1s who either have been washouts or are still waiting to have some significant impact with their respective teams. And those are the top players selected."
Indeed, even on the Steelers, a franchise that makes smart draft decisions, the team MVP in each of the past two years--James Harrison and Willie Parker--were UNDRAFTED.  

I think it would be hard for anyone to say that the NFL does a great job of ranking draft prospects, and yet, the NFL has a ton of advantages over places like scouts and rivals that try to rank college football recruits.  

First of all, NFL prospects are, for the most part, fully developed physically, while high school juniors and seniors are still likely to grow another inch or three and put on more weight.  Secondly, college football competition is easier to evaluate than high school football.  We might argue over whether or not the Big Ten is better than the SEC, but at least we have an idea that those conferences are pretty similar, and better than the MAC, which is good, but not great.  Compare that to trying to understand what it means to rush for 1500 yards in the WPIAL AAAA with rushing for 1500 yards in single A Mississippi.  Who the hell knows which is more challenging--and by how much.  In short, the NFL has more information--and way more resources in terms of time, money and personnel, than scouts and rivals--and they still get it wrong as often as they get it right.  

Listen over the next few weeks.  While everybody will try to rank the draft, they'll usually qualify their ranking by saying, you can't accurately rank this draft for at least two years.  

Nevertheless, Saturday and Sunday are great days to drink in the afternoon, remember players' past, and ponder their future.  But let's not sully those days--or decision days in college football--by placing too much stock in how so-called experts claim to rank one team against another.