Top Ten College Football Recruiting 2003-2007 Average ranking 1. USC 2. Florida 3. Georgia 4. LSU 5. Oklahoma 6. Miami 7. Florida State 8. Michigan 9. Texas 10. Tennessee Others of local interest: 13. Ohio State 15. Notre Dame 17. Penn State 18. Boston College 19. Purdue Notes: Notre Dame's senior and junior classes rated 40th and 36th respectively. Their sophomore class rated 8th but has lost four of its highly rated members this year so that is kind of an illusion. The rest of you know your own recruiting situations... 8) Here is the current BCS standings.... 1. Ohio State 8-0 2. Boston College 7-0 3. LSU 7-1 4. Arizona State 7-0 5. Oregon 6-1 6. Oklahoma 7-1 7. West Virginia 6-1 8. Virginia Tech 6-1 9. Kansas 7-0 10. South Florida 6-1 I have highlighted the most obvious overachievers. Slackers would include Miami, Georgia, ND, FSU, Tenn The moral? Splashy recruiting is nice. Competent coaching is better. If you have both ( USC, Fla, LSU, OK, Oh. St., Tex ) you've got it made. Fire away, boys! :wink:
Makes sense to me George. Sometimes good coaches can make champions out of marginal talent like Urban did when he was at Utah. The Utes went 13-0 and with what consensus recruiting ranking I wonder.
First of all, how can ND's senior class be ranked 40th. It was undermaned and low talent to start with and has gotten worse over the years. Second, and most importantly, just where do JUCO players fit into the equation? My guess is nowhere.
Here is the actual ND classes for 5th year seniors and regular seniors. As you can see, the 5th years, while lacking any blue chips, were rated above average. The 4th year guys remaining are few in numbers and much less highly regarded. More players from that class transferred out than remained to play which to me is shocking. You're right Gip, ND cannot use JUCOs to fill the void. 2003 Class (5th years on team) Joe Brockington LB 3 stars John Carlson TE 3 stars Trevor Laws DT 4 stars Geoffrey Price K 3 stars Dwight Stephenson, Jr. LB 3 stars John Sullivan OL 4 stars Travis Thomas RB 3.5 stars Ambrose Wooden DB 4 stars Tom Zbikowski QB 4 stars Average Class Rank 3.5 stars 2004 Class (Seniors) 7 players Darrin Bragg QB 2 stars Justin Brown DE 2 stars Maurice Crum LB 3 stars Leo Ferrine DB 2.5 stars Junior Jabbie DB 3.5 stars Terrail Lambert DB 3.5 stars Anthony Vernaglia ATH 4 stars Average Class Rank 2.92 stars 2004 Class (Left team) 10 players Abdel Banda LB 2 stars Brandon Nicolas DE 3 stars Chauncey Incarnato OL 3 stars Chris Vaughn WR 3 stars Darius Walker RB 3 stars David Wolke QB 2.5 stars John Kadous OL 3 stars Justin Hoskins RB 3.5 stars Ronald Talley DE 3 stars Tregg Duerson DB 2 stars Average Rank 2.8 stars
I'm not one to pay much attention to the "pundits" rankings of classes.... take a look leadership on this years Buckeye team.... Laurinaitis - 3 stars - ranked 28th at ILB - won Nagurski as soph Jenkins - 3 stars - ranked 61st at CB - Thorpe finalist - likely winner imho Barton - 3 stars - ranked 60th at OT - captain and leader of O-line/offense Robiskie - 3 stars - ranked 61st at WR - the 60 ranked ahead must be really good! Hartline - 3 stars - ranked 36th at WR Boeckman - 3 stars - ranked 19th at QB With the notable exception of Beanie Wells and Alex Boone on the O-line, this team does not feature any of the recruiting rags 5 star studs. That said, at least 3 and perhaps all of these 5 3 star guys will be first round draft picks. ... No doubt that recruiting talent is critical, but recognizing it - independent of Kurelic or others view - keeping it and developing it once you get it, is vastly more important imho .and I think that Tressel and Co do that as well as anybody in the game. Let me think about it......Kurelic's view(or insert recruting guru name here) -v- Tressel's view.....hmmmmm, that's a tough one! :roll:
I'm curious about one thing George, are those rankings based on signing day rankings or adjusted for non qualifiers? That could make a big difference, see FSU for instance. It's an interesting list though, thanks!
Bill, Those are composite signing days ratings of all the recruiting services added together then averaged.
I was thinking about BuckeyeT's post with regard to Ohio State and a plethora of 3*'s as opposed to 5* and 4* players. That's a good list he has and a tribute to Tressel and his staff for finding and developing those guys into 5* college players. Then I was looking at the Scout team recruiting rankings and when you look at them in the default view, which is total points and favors those with the most # of commits, the top 5 is... Notre Dame Georgia UCLA Miami USC If you look at it by clicking on the avg * rating which sort of tells you the overall quality of the class. The top 5 changes to this. USC Ohio State Notre Dame Michigan Florida Ohio State and Fla are further down the rankings in the default view because they have a lot fewer recruits than the other teams. But no matter what you still have to coach'em into productive college players.