The PSU micro-universe aside, SMQ disagrees here on the whole using the NFL draft as a basis.

is based on who goes to workouts for the recruiting sties.

So if a player has an offer and doesn’t do the workouts he’ll probably stay a 2 star rather than move up to a 3.

Its not a perfect system and it provides a rating based on potential. So a guy runs so fast, benches so much, etc etc. It doesn’t and won’t say how someone reacts in a game.

Look at Mike Hart. He was a 3 star guy who was not super gifted athletically, but he just didn’t go down when he carried the ball. So he was rated based on his athleticism rather than what he coudl do on the field.

And last is that the 5 stars could be bad at PSU from development and from style of play. King might have been a stud in a press coverage defense. Williams might have excelled in teh Florida offense.

Its not that the star system should be destroyed, its that recruiting classes should be evaluated after the fact. If everyone gets into the school and how they work out after each year.

really has the point on recruiting…….how does who is recruiting a guy impact that players rating ? ND would be the prime example. Are they recruiting 5 star guys or 3 star borderline 4 star guys that become 5 star guys once ND shows interest ?

As I have stated ad nauseum on this site in the past, at the end of the day the teams that win are the teams that recruit well according to the rankings. Of course their are exceptions, but there are exceptions in everything as we all know.

WInningest programs since 2008:

Tennessee
Michigan
USC
Miami
Georgia
Virginia Tech
Ohio State
Oklahoma
Texas
Boise State

Apparently Frank Beamer is arguably the best coach in the country, given their record and the fact that they don’t find themselves in the top of the recruiting rankings year in and year out like everybody else on the list does save BSU.

Go Broncos. (That was for my wife).

POZ was a 2 or 3 star recruit…

until it’s almost off the board.

I can get really worked up about this (rivals/scouts/etc suck; herbstreit agrees with me), but usually reserve those fights for the offseason. We’ve got real football to concentrate on.

In general, though, I’ll say this:
Recruiting matters a lot, but I don’t trust the criteria or judgement of the sites that do the evaluating. In short, I trust Joe Paterno, Tom Bradley, etc more than the jackasses who spend all their time fawning over 16 year olds.