Ranking football recruits is serious business
Mike Farrell has been threatened. He’s been sued. He’s even been accused of height discrimination.
All because someone thought Farrell rated a high school football player too low in the star system.
“You name it, it’s happened to me,” said Farrell, the national recruiting director for Rivals.com. “There really isn’t anything I haven’t seen in this industry.”
The topic of recruiting rankings reaches peak frenzy each year in the weeks before and after National Signing Day.
Passionate college fan bases pin their championship hopes on the number of stars next to a recruit's name without ever seeing many of them play. Coaches tout the rankings if they make them look good and downplay their importance if they make them look bad.
According to the 247Sports composite rankings, the 2017 class Tennessee signed Wednesday finished with one five-star player, 4 four-star players and 22 three-star players.
UT head coach Butch Jones didn’t give the individual rankings much merit during a celebration in Nashville on Thursday.
“Everyone gets into the whole two-star, three-star, four-star, five-star thing. The only five-star that we even concern ourselves with is a five-star heart,” Jones said. “We want five-star hearts and five-star competitors.”
Although player rankings are an inexact science, the collective results can’t be dismissed. There is a reason Alabama has finished with the top-ranked recruiting class seven straight years.
Eight of the last 10 national champions had at least one top-five recruiting class in the four years before winning the title, and all 10 had at least one top-10 class. Alabama accounts for four of those championship teams.
The rankings have spawned a growth industry with major sites like 247Sports, Rivals, Scout and ESPN branching out to host evaluation camps and passing tournaments. Each site invests a lot of time and money to produce the rankings.
They all have teams of national and regional directors that travel around the country to watch recruits play in games and perform in camps. They break down film of recruits and make multiple evaluations throughout a player’s high school career.
Players receiving a five-star ranking are likely college All-Americans and potential early-round NFL Draft picks. The four-star players are projected as likely first-team all-conference selections and future NFL players. Three-star players are expected to be impact college players who may need a few years to develop.
“It is really a massive information grab from us to produce the rankings. We are trying to get as much information about as many kids as possible,” said Barton Simmons, the director of scouting for 247Sports. “We are talking to high school coaches and college coaches and watching kids as many times as we can in camps, games and on highlight films. It’s a long road to learn more and more about them as prospects and our rankings are very fluid in that regard because they can change one year to the next as we see them compete more.”
The sites don’t rank players based on the college scholarship offers they receive. Social media has made it easier to tell how faulty that premise would be. On a near daily basis, high school players tweet: “Blessed to be offered by (insert name of school here).”
“I have seen web sites rank kids by offers and that is completely useless because every top kid in the country has 50 offers. You can’t do it that way,” said Farrell, who has been ranking players since 1998. “You have to base it on scouting with in-person evaluations and film and come up with a body of work for the final rankings. It’s still hard because some guys fit better in certain systems than others.”
A recruit’s ranking does not pre-determine his future. There are variables in career success that go beyond talent and statistics.
The rankings can’t measure work ethic or desire. They can’t forecast late bloomers. They can’t determine how much a player will develop under the right coach or flourish in the right system.
There have been numerous examples throughout the years of three-star players who matured into All-Americans and NFL standouts (Von Miller) and five-star players who were derailed by injuries and off-the-field issues (Bryce Brown).
“There are flaws. It’s not a perfect system. We do the best we can with the information we have,” Farrell said. “I can tell you we have a whole lot more information than we used to. It used to be VHS tapes coming in the mail and there weren’t camps or all-star games. But you still can’t predict everything.”
The recruiting analysts are frequently reminded about their rankings each year when the Super Bowl arrives and lower-star players are highlighted.
According to CBSSports.com, 61 percent of the starters in Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons were not ranked in the top 500 overall of their recruiting class.
The analysts contend the statistic is misleading because the number of two and three star players in each class greatly outnumber the four and five stars.
Only a select number of recruits are labeled five stars each year – 32 in this year’s class by 274Sports – and hundreds are labeled three stars.
“I think it’s completely overplayed. (Falcons wide receiver) Julio Jones was our consensus No. 1 receiver coming out of high school and you don’t hear anyone talk about that,” said Brandon Huffman, the national director of college football recruiting for Scout.com. “But whenever there is a two-star that reaches the Super Bowl, it’s always pointed out how bad the rankings are.”
Although every team wants to sign more five- and four-star recruits, a three-star heavy class like Tennessee’s this year isn’t necessarily bad.
“There is this misperception that three stars can’t play football and that is furthest from the truth,” Huffman said. “The three stars could be potential starters and all-conference candidates who are going to play in college and be a big contributor. He just may have to take a little more time to develop, maybe redshirt a year and get stronger and faster in the weight room.”
Huffman annually hears from players, coaches and parents trying to convince him to change a recruit’s ranking, believing their college scholarship chances hinge on the number of stars next to their name.
“I’ve been called some pretty vulgar names and told I will basically never work in this industry again,” said Huffman, in his 14th year at Scout. “You deal with some crazy people, and quarterback dads are from a different breed. The only thing worse than a quarterback dad is a quarterback dad who played in the NFL or at a high level. They have the hardest time being objective when it comes to their own kid.”
The analysts realize people will always question their credentials no matter how much experience they have or how many rankings they’ve accurately forecasted over the years.
“It is literally impossible to make everyone happy. In fact, you are going to make most people mad because the fans are looking at the rankings through a lens of their commits and their targets,” said Simmons, in his 12th year ranking recruits. “There are tens of thousands of prospects nationally but they don’t always see that bigger picture. You can’t take it personally if you are involved in the ranking process. That is something I have definitely come to terms with.”
Although some coaches publicly dismiss the value of the rankings, Texas head coach Tom Herman isn’t among them.
Herman was the offensive coordinator at Ohio State when the Buckeyes won the national title in 2015 with players from recruiting classes ranked in the top five.
After being hired by Texas from Houston in late November, Herman couldn’t make up much ground in this year’s class. Texas finished 26th in the 247Sports team rankings, the lowest for the program in the history of the rankings dating back to 1999.
“There is validity (in rankings),” Herman told reporters on signing day. “Every analytic you look at, you look at the correlation and causation of top-10 recruiting classes and 10-, 11-, 12-win seasons and they’re real. Usually a five-star kid has five-star talent. What rankings don’t do though is crack their chest open and look at their heart. They don’t look at work ethic, don’t look at what their coaches say about them. There are a lot of three- and four-star guys who are undervalued because of those potentials. I don’t frown upon rankings. I think they’re real.”
The analysts agree. Although they want to project every player with 100 percent accuracy, they realize their rankings are just a snapshot of the present time.
“We are not issuing the fate of these guys. Their success is in their own hands,” Simmons said. “We are just reflecting what their body of work represents to this date and everything beyond is up to them.”
Tennessee’s Recent Recruiting Classes
2005 - 1 five star, 10 four stars, 9 three stars (No. 3 team ranking)
2006 - 0 five stars, 1 four stars, 17 three stars (No. 26)
2007 - 2 five stars, 12 four stars, 17 three stars (No. 3)
2008 - 0 five stars, 4 four stars, 13 three stars (No. 34)
2009 - 1 five star, 8 four stars, 12 three stars (No. 8)
2010 - 2 five stars, 8 four stars, 15 three stars (No. 9)
2011 - 0 five stars, 9 four stars, 18 three stars (No. 14)
2012 - 0 five stars, 8 four stars, 14 three stars (No. 20)
2013 - 0 five stars, 4 four stars, 18 three stars (No. 24)
2014 - 0 five stars, 16 four stars, 16 three stars (No. 7)
2015 – 1 five star, 15 four stars, 12 three stars (No. 4)
2016 - 0 five stars, 10 four stars, 13 three stars (No. 14)
2017 - 1 five star, 4 four stars and 22 three stars (No. 17)