Team recruiting rankings.

Michigan is up to #3 after Peppers decision...

http://recruiting.scout.com/a.z?s=73&p=9&c=14&yr=2014

Peppers was huge for us. Getting Hand will put us over the top.

Rivals has Michigan up 4 spots to #4
ESPN has Michigan up 0 spots to #1
247 has Michigan up 4 spots to #1
Scout has Michigan up 4 spots to #3

I think we'll see McDowell, Westphall and Williams commit within the next two months so that should keep us pretty high on all of the lists.

Do you feel team recruiting rankings matter? At all?

hailtoyourvictor wrote:

Do you feel team recruiting rankings matter? At all?

Well IMO I feel like both individual and team rankings matter. That said, I'll admit they both aren't perfect.

A few weeks ago we got into a pretty heated discussion about the star ratings. In the end it really didn't go anywhere and really just got people worked up. One side argues that star ratings aren't the end all say all and one side argues for the correlation of higher starts to higher probability a kid will pan out. Both sides are partially right BTW.

I don't want to take this thread back there. I'd like to talk a bit about how I wish a few things would change regarding the rating and ranking systems because I think they are directly related.

#1 For individual recruits, I think the four major recruiting sites (ESPN, 247, Rivals and Scout) should agree on a set standard for grading the recruits. I know that even if they do they still probably won't always be on par with each other but it would at least help alleviate the problem of one site having a guy as an average 3* and another having him as a high 4*.

I think you can see that ESPN has tried pretty hard to tweak their system to match the others over the past five years (adjusted their system twice in that time) but that said, ESPN still has a a long way to go to match up how they make a kid a 5*. In their current system I doubt Marcus Dupree would get a fifth star.

#2 For team results I wish the sites would put a bit more into evaluating a teams needs and basing the team rankings on whether or not they filled those needs.

For instance, I don't think UM should have been so high last year because we didn't fully address our WR situation. Yes we got some WRs and yes I definitely think that at least one will turn out to be pretty good but they weren't the high 4 and 5 star kids we targeted so basically they could be construed as fillers. As it is now, most sites take a cumulative score of the recruits and divide it by the class size and that really doesn't work. My personal opinion is that if a team lands two 5* QBs but doesn't need one because they have a 5* starting and a 5* on the bench then they probably haven't properly addressed their needs.

Recruiting or any ratings don't REALLY matter (wins do) but they are great engines for discussion, hope, and optimism. They help keep the fans fired up.