I really enjoy reading Steward Mandel every chance I get on CNNSI.com... Hopefully one day UNT will get some ink(or ascii) from this guy. Most folks that follow the lesser tier college football programs already know this to be true, but it is kind of nice to see this stated by someone who evaluates college football at the national level... Just may be more reason that the new recruits UNT is pulling(even for 2008 already) are almost certainly being under-valued by those national tracking sites...***cough*** rivals...scout...***cough*** I swear I've seen some of the guys ranked at 3 stars before committing to UNT and then afterwards are downgraded to 2... Maybe it is the green coolaid I'm drinkin... Enjoy. Mailbag entry last week: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writ.../mailbag/1.html I have a question for you: How come teams like TCU, Louisville, etc., can be in the top 25 consistently for the last seven years and yet they NEVER show up on anyone's "top recruiting" lists. Apparently they are getting some good kids ... so why do only the big schools make the lists? -- Forrest Tempel, Fort Worth, Texas For the most part, I think recruiting analysts do a pretty good job identifying the elite players in any given recruiting class. I've done research on the subject many times through the years, including for Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls, and the top 25-50 prospects in the country by and large turn into very successful college players. Once you go further down the list, however, it gets a lot more difficult, and it's here where I think the recruiting rankings can be a little misleading. First of all, it's not like coaches rely on recruiting rankings to decide whom they're going to pursue. Coaches do their own, very thorough evaluations of hundreds and hundreds of prospects, and their opinion of a kid may differ from that of the analysts. Furthermore, there's the self-fulfilling prophecy that, if Player A is being recruited by Florida State, Miami and USC while Player B is being recruited by TCU, Louisville and Memphis, the analysts are going to take that as a sign that Player A should be ranked significantly higher than Player B. It could well be, however, that Player B is just as good as Player A, it's just that TCU's coaches saw something different on tape than Florida State's coaches. This isn't necessarily an indictment against those Florida State coaches, it's just that evaluating most recruits really is that subjective. I know I'm already trying to sell you on one book, but for a truly fascinating window into this very topic, you're going to want to pick up a second one this fall, Meat Market by Bruce Feldman. Feldman spent much of the past season inside Ole Miss' war room and shares first-hand details on the coaches' evaluation process. It's more complicated than you might think.
