Every year about this time, when recruiting is usually the only thing of merit to discuss, the topic of the recruit’s ‘star’ rankings floats to the top of the blog leader boards.
I’ve always been of the mind that I don’t really care that much what a PITT player does after college. I know it reflects well on the school and the program and I know that recruits look at it as incentive also. But IMO where the rubber meets the road is how well that recruit played during his college years.
This subject is singularly pertinent to PITT fans as we now have a new Head Coach in Paul Chryst who has been tagged with a question mark when it comes to his recruiting abilities. There has been a lot of hue and cry over a ‘late recruiting start’ which is unfounded compared to PITT’s recent recruiting history. In addition, PITT just had a Head Coach in Dave Wannstedt who was pretty good at pulling in four and five star players but didn’t have much to show at the end of the day with those kids on the roster.
This April 2011 article on Scout.com written by Scott Kennedy addresses those drafted in the first round of that year. As to Kennedy’s article, I discount the number of stars players in the 1st round have as being too small a sample and of their being projected as to how well they will play in the NFL and on the specific team that drafted them. It is fun to read and talk about but IMO it isn’t enough to base a solid discussion regarding player’s production in college though.
So, using the NCAA rankings for 2011, I did some in-depth research based on the question “What were the star rankings coming out of HS for the Top Ten performers in college football this season?” Basically I want to know how the top ranked players performed in the setting that we all care and talk about which is college football. These rankings list top 100 players in Division I in individual categories so the sample used below is the top 10%.
I used Scout.com for the number of stars assigned to these players as HS seniors. If Scout had the player unranked (UR) then I checked Rivals. To make it as fair as possible I used any star ranking between Scout & Rivals for the averages so that an “unranked” wouldn’t skew the result downward. To cover all aspects of the game I used three categories on offense: Rushing yards, Passing efficiency and Receiving yards per game. I also used three on defense; Total tackles, Passes defended and Sacks.
The results are pretty surprising I think…
OFFENSE
- LaMichael James, Oregon 3
- Bobby Rainey, Western Ky. 2
- Monte Ball, Wisconsin 3
- Ronnie Hillman, San Diego St. 3
- Trent Richardson, Alabama 5
- Bernard Pierce, Temple UR/2 Rivals
- Zach Line, SMU 2
- David Wilson, Virginia Tech 4
- Robbie Rouse, Fresno St. UR/2 Rivals
- Terrance Ganaway, Baylor 2
2.8 Stars on average
