The recruiting sites aren’t finished handing out stars yet. Right now, Rivals has 14 5-star players listed. In 2009, they had 33 and in 2008, they had 30. You can count up the 4-star guys and notice that this year has fewer as well. (Scout follows a similar trend.) Part of the problem is that the recruiting sites have limited resources; they can only evaluate so many players and compare them against each other so much in the limited time frame they’ve had so far. They tend to start with the football factories and the well-known schools first, then trickle down through the rest as best as they can, but they also rely heavily on the ‘input’ of the colleges themselves. As more major colleges make offers to kids, the recruiting sites tend to award those kids more stars, even if they haven’t seen the kids play. (And in fact, a lot of kids will try to play up for more offers just to get their star rating up.)

Since UT’s new staff loves to be the first to offer a kid, you can expect to see a lot of offers given to players that Rivals and Scout haven’t laid their eyes on yet. That’ll mean we hear a lot about 3-star (and even unranked) players at this time of year. As things progress and the sites get more info, they’ll make adjustments to the stars and the relative rankings of the various players across the country.

We’ll have to wait and see if the UT staff’s talent sniffers are on track by waiting until these kids actually come in and play. But we just don’t have the information on hand to know how good these kids are compared to the preseason 5-stars from the football factories. At least, not yet.

trust the all star recruiters making the big bucks @ an actual football program over internet prognosticators. and this is coming from an internet prognosticator. if you took a poll at the scout or rivals offices on how many of those folks would rather be doing their evaluations as part of the recruiting staff at a major program like UT, im gonna guess that there would be very few who wouldn’t change jobs in a heart beat. there is a reason these guys are making 6 figures or have books written about them instead of working in relative obscurity at a dot com. patience.

Gotta be.

Both of these players were personally evaluated by the coaches at camp. Fulton will definitely be a 4 star in the next rankings (so he will suddenly become “good,” right?), and Pair fits our system perfectly.

Every player can’t be a 5 STAR BEASTSTUD WITH INCREDIBLE HIPS. We need depth along both lines. Thus far our coaches have done an incredible job filling our needs. Getting these solid prospects who fit our system allow us to then turn out attention to one or two higher ranked players.

You clearly know absolutely nothing about recruiting. Why don’t you ask Alabama fans what they think of Utah’s defensive line full of 2 and 3 star players?

I’m still willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt right now. I believe he may just be rather young instead of a troll.

Bbrown – reread Hooper’s post ^ and see if that makes any sense to you.

It is WAY too early to draw conclusion about ANY team’s class based off of what Scout and Rivals say.

Ignoring the question of whether he is a troll, let’s break down why his rant is ridiculous on several different levels.

1) This relates to Hooper’s point. I have a question for BBrown. Are the recruiting sites omniscient? Unless you are a simpleton of biblical proportions, your answer to that must be a decided NO. I am a big fan of recruiting services. I think they get it right more often than not. But their evaluations are a work in progress. They haven’t seen all these guys yet, or maybe they have just seen them on film and are making their assessments based on that. They have limited resources. The information will certainly become better — though never complete — as these guys get into their senior year of footbal. But as of right now it is most decidedly incomplete.

2) Like I said before, I generally think recruiting services get it right. To say that stars don’t matter flies in the face of logic, and I wont’ say it. But it is not absolute. And one of the most difficult positions for recruiting services to evalute — if not the most difficult — is offensive line. It is difficult to make an assessment off of an offensive linemen high school game film. With RB’s and WR’s it is pretty easy. You can see how the guy runs, how he shifts, how he blocks, how he reads, blocks, how good are his hands, whether he likes contact or shies away, etc. etc. There isn’t much you can tell by looking at an offensive linement. Thus, if there is one position, where I will absolutely positively trust the judgment of our coaches (who have seen these guys in camp) over the recruiting services, it is offensive line. To say the same thing differently, offensive line is the one position where I assign the least weight to a rivals or scout ranking.

3) At least one of these two guys will have four-stars before NSD next year. I would bet a substantial sum of money on this. Will this make you feel better about the pick-up?

From 2006 to 2008, Notre Dame has been ranked in the top 10 for recruited. Let’s also not forget that back in 2008, Notre Dame was ranked 2nd by Rivals, for recruiting class. In which they had three 5 stars, sixteen 4 stars, and only four 3 stars. My point is, and it was echoed before, is that talent does not always equate to success. There are more variables that factor into a team’s success (i.e. coaching.) This post was not designed to bash ND, because they are plenty of other teams that you could make the same case for, even previous Vol squads. I’m just saying if you are looking at success based on talent, it doesn’t add up. These players that UT has recruited, are hand picked because the staff feels they fit into the system. Which too me, is more important than what some analyst says behind a computer.

Note all rankings were used per Rivals.com

This is how recruiting works…you see. Coaches go out and evaluate potential players at camps and such…Then..they use their knowledge of football to determine if this player has what it takes to play at their school..They then offer him a scholly..They DON"T go onto rivals and scout and see how many Stars they have..that is unless you coached at U of Miami..

This man has a good point