3-star recruiting promotion has to stop

Harry · September 30, 2019

If there is anything to be taken from the Houston game, it is that we HAVE to stop using the 3-star system as our comfort zone in recruiting. The 3-star ranking is flawed and very subjective. 3-star rankings are not an accurate enough gauge of prospects ability or rankings. OFFERS are the best way to determine where you are. If a player has REAL offers it means something. Being able to say our entire class is all three stars was nice for a couple of years but I would rather sign a ton of 2-star guys that had significant, REAL (not dependent on x) offers from other good programs. Also, the recruiting services undervalue transfers who they originally gave high rankings to out of high school so that really doesn't give an accurate assessment either.

GMG

BillySee58 · September 30, 2019

3 hours ago, Harry said:

If there is anything to be taken from the Houston game, it is that we HAVE to stop using the 3-star system as our comfort zone in recruiting. The 3-star ranking is flawed and very subjective. 3-star rankings are not an accurate enough gauge of prospects ability or rankings. OFFERS are the best way to determine where you are. If a player has REAL offers it means something. Being able to say our entire class is all three stars was nice for a couple of years but I would rather sign a ton of 2-star guys that had significant, REAL (not dependent on x) offers from other good programs. Also, the recruiting services undervalue transfers who they originally gave high rankings to out of high school so that really doesn't give an accurate assessment either.

GMG

ESPN has had a lot to do with the dilution of the 3-Star rating. Look back at a lot of CUSA classes and ESPN would basically give a 3-Star rating to anyone who committed before the season started.

It was like their way of saying “see, we pay attention to recruits outside the top 300 in the country,” when it’s obvious to anyone who pays attention that they don’t. It was lazy and greatly reduced the weight behind a 3-Star composite rating on 247, which has become the industry standard. A lot of people on this board have gotten excited about 3-stars who were only rated as such because of ESPN doing what I mentioned.

But yeah, always look at the offer lists.

ttunt1970 · September 30, 2019

Harry & Billy

I too look at offers not star rating, because

Booger and a couple of kids in the past

were rated only 2*s but had a lot of people

talking to them but because of no publicity,

camps and no test /grades made their rating.

NorthTexasWeLove · October 1, 2019

8 hours ago, Harry said:

If there is anything to be taken from the Houston game, it is that we HAVE to stop using the 3-star system as our comfort zone in recruiting. The 3-star ranking is flawed and very subjective. 3-star rankings are not an accurate enough gauge of prospects ability or rankings. OFFERS are the best way to determine where you are. If a player has REAL offers it means something. Being able to say our entire class is all three stars was nice for a couple of years but I would rather sign a ton of 2-star guys that had significant, REAL (not dependent on x) offers from other good programs. Also, the recruiting services undervalue transfers who they originally gave high rankings to out of high school so that really doesn't give an accurate assessment either.

GMG

3-stars and offer lists are USUALLY synonymous. Whatever star and whatever offer list usually is too.

Teams with good overall composite team talent usually fare well. Teams that don't have as good of composite talent usually do not.

It's not rocket science. Give me a roster of 85 three stars and I'll show you a good football team. Give me a roster full of hopes in the wind, I'll show you a bad football team.

GrandGreen · October 1, 2019

Three stars ratings are basically meaningless. Athletes offered ships by Div. 1 schools are predominately three stars. If an athlete only has one D1 offer, he may be rated 2 stars but generally only if the school offering is a lower tier G5.

G5's seldom sign 4 or 5 star athletes almost by definition. G5's rarely get that level of recruit, therefore anyone who signed with a G5 school can't be rated better than a 3 star.

Ratings, no matter what the ranking services states, are primarily based on reported offers.

No, I don't believe they have a staff of experts evaluating hundreds of recruits.

Offers, however are a lot more reliable data than in the past. As recruits, post official notification of a school's offer.

The number rating is the only way to compare three star rankings. Those number ratings look to be primarily based on offers plus a size component.

Someone will nearly always post in threads like this, that only actual performance is important. Obviously true, but there are not many discussions about recruiting classes; five years after recruitment.

Edited October 1, 2019 by GrandGreen

BillySee58 · October 2, 2019

I did the math. Of the 141 CUSA commits, 132 have 3-Star composite ratings. 94%. So yeah, 3-Star ratings basically hold almost no weight.

https://247sports.com/Season/2020-Football/CompositeTeamRankings/?Conference=C-USA

97and03 · October 2, 2019

Has our recruiting actually improved? If so how much?

Working on something...BRB

Harry · October 2, 2019

11 hours ago, BillySee58 said:

I did the math. Of the 141 CUSA commits, 132 have 3-Star composite ratings. 94%. So yeah, 3-Star ratings basically hold almost no weight.

Wow - good stuff @BillySee58

That is a VERY telling stat.

My suggestion is we start our own ranking based on P5 G5 and FCS offers... the problem is that there is not consistent validity to the offer lists as many of the offers are contingent on this etc. The recruiting services like Rivals etc rarely update their offer lists once the offer is given initially perhaps when an initial coaching staff is removed or replaced. So it appears we should use offers as the guideline with the caveat that offer lists are not always accurate.

97and03 · October 2, 2019

Ok, I just looked at all commits from 2016-19. Although the star inflation factor seems to be real, I think there is direct correlation with OFFER inflation. We have seen several articles the last few years that many schools are throwing out hundreds of offers, most of which are not valid in the end, ie. if the kid wanted to commit there would not really be a place for them. Add to this that the services are getting better at tracking offers to lower-end kids, especially because of twitter.

So my theory is that star ratings are at least in part based on offers and since offers have skyrocketed, so have 3 star ratings. That being said, it does look like the overall talent level (as recognized by others) is improving, and therefore "recruiting" is improving.

Please see the below charts where I tabulated FBS/P5 offers for our last four classes. I included recruits that never made it to campus, because it was still a case of getting the kid to agree to come here over other schools. Offers are as reported by 247. The FBS column is the recruit's FBS offers, not including ours. "P5" is a subset of those total offers. I did not include FCS.

If @BillySee58 would repost his grading system here in the thread, we could compare the classes that way also. I might even have time to go back and add the grades later.

2019

Recruit	FBS	"P5"
Deonte Simpson	7	1
Grayson Murphy	6	0
DeShawn Gaddie	10	0
Gabriel Murphy	6	0
Asher Alberding	5	1
Oscar Adaway	3	0
Taylor Jacobs	1	1
Khatib Lyles	11	4
Kealon Jackson	10	2
Damon Ward	4	0
Kenneth Dotson	1	0
Daxton Byers	4	0
Jevin Murray	13	2
Dorian Morris	6	0
Will Kuehne	3	1
Kevin Wood	3	0
Quinn Whitlock	0	0
John Brunner	1	0
Jimmy Walker	3	0
Chris Cassidy	1	0
Leandre Davis	2	0
Asher Frow	0	0
David Sow	6	1
Demeco Roland	0	0

2018

Recruit	FBS	"P5"
Alex Morris	7	2
Reggie Williams	10	6
Kevyon Davis	5	1
Jyaire Shorter	8	0
Austin Ogunmakin	2	0
Jermarcus White	0	0
Kason Martin	0	0
Deandre Torrey	2	0
Tim Faison	0	0
Jason Bean	4	0
Jaxon Gibbs	3	1
Derrick Shaw	2	0
Larry Nixon	0	0
Dayton LeBlanc	0	0
Jordan Hunt	0	0
Keelan Crosby	0	0
Daizion Carroll	0	0
Darrian McMillan	2	0
Cole Brown	0	0
Thomas Preston	4	0
Jordan Redfearn	0	0
Josh Sa'afi	0	0
Caleb Colvin	0	0

2017

Recruit	FBS	"P5"
Jalen Guyton	5	2
Cade Pearson	1	0
Jevin Pahinui	1	0
Tre Siggers	3	2
Jaelon Darden	6	1
Greg White	2	0
Cam Johnson	5	0
Kody Fulp	1	0
Tyreke Davis	1	0
Dakoda Newman	0	0
Dion Novil	0	0
Tony Krasniqi	3	0
Evan Johnson	0	0
Jacob Brammer	2	0
Brian Parish	2	0
Chris Thornton	0	0
Manase Mose	2	0
Sosaia Mose	0	0
Kemon Hall	0	0

2016

Recruit	FBS	"P5"
Nic Smith	4	2
Josh Wheeler	0	0
LaDarius Hamilton	2	0
TJ Henson	7	1
William Johnson	6	3
Rico Bussey	8	0
Cody Hayes	2	0
Jo Ozougwu	0	0
Jameel Moore	1	0
Deon Hair-Griffin	3	0
Chandler Anthony	2	0
Mason Fine	0	0
Dontavious Baulkman	0	0
EJ Ejiya	0	0
Tyler Wilson	0	0
Khairi Muhammad	0	0
Darius Turner	1	0
Eric Jenkins	6	2
Raveon Hoston	9	3
Anthony Wyche	0	0
Jalen Thomas	4	0
Quinetin Jackson	1	0

UNTLifer · October 2, 2019

12 minutes ago, 97and03 said:

2018

Jermarcus White 0 0

Whatever happened to this young man. I recall anything about him. Did he even make it to campus?

97and03 · October 2, 2019

1 hour ago, UNTLifer said:

Whatever happened to this young man. I recall anything about him. Did he even make it to campus?

Was on the 2018 roster: https://meangreensports.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=3873

GrandGreen · October 2, 2019

1 hour ago, Harry said:

Wow - good stuff @BillySee58

That is a VERY telling stat.

My suggestion is we start our own ranking based on P5 G5 and FCS offers... the problem is that there is not consistent validity to the offer lists as many of the offers are contingent on this etc. The recruiting services like Rivals etc rarely update their offer lists once the offer is given initially perhaps when an initial coaching staff is removed or replaced. So it appears we should use offers as the guideline with the caveat that offer lists are not always accurate.

As I stated above, rankings are based primarily on offers.

However, to go that extra step and basically create your own ratings based on offers is daunting if not impossible.

Schools can't directly report who they offer scholarships. They can and do leak that data to someone like Vito. So NT fans get good data on who is offered.

The above list is a great recap of what is available on recruits. The problem is there is no practical way to really verify those stats.

The problem is getting data on a recruit's other offers. There are few reliable sources and it would take more work than the information has value.

As pointed out, schools now are apparently sending out hundreds of offers to players they really don't have that much interest in and others that they have only a minute chance to sign. These pseudo offers complicate trying to make judgments based on other teams interest in a recruit.

Another significant issue, is that a lot of legitimate offers are just not reported if there is no interest from the player.

A highly sought out player may decide that reporting lesser offers is not worthwhile.

He or she also maybe already committed so there are fewer offers, or nobody has any interest in reporting those offers.

BillySee58 · October 2, 2019

19 minutes ago, GrandGreen said:

As I stated above, rankings are based primarily on offers.

This is true to a good degree. But another problem with what Harry mentioned is people often stop at 3-stars when seeing how a player is rated. 247 has greatly expanded the delineation between 3-stars by classifying everyone between 80 and 90 a 3-star.

An 89 will almost assuredly have 5+ P5 offers, while an 80 could have just one. But for people who stop at 3-Star, it seems the same. Which leads to Harry’s point that we can’t use 3-Star as the bar for a quality UNT recruit anymore. Maybe more like 82.5 or some arbitrary number. Or offer lists.

Harry · October 2, 2019

@GrandGreen I think we agree in principle, however my point is that I have seen (and felt) a sense of accomplishment in the fact that we sign an entire class of 3-star prospects. I am only saying I don't think we can do that anymore. We also can't really judge a class which bases it's rankings on that either.

I think in the end we can't really count on any of this as exact data where we are in the hierarchy of programs. The recruiting services do a good job on the elite program level where the data on prospects is intensive and complete.

Twitter is doing a pretty good job on offers from the prospects so perhaps that is a way for us to keep better track of it.

GrandGreen · October 2, 2019

10 minutes ago, Harry said:

@GrandGreen I think we agree in principle, however my point is that I have seen (and felt) a sense of accomplishment in the fact that we sign an entire class of 3-star prospects. I am only saying I don't think we can do that anymore. We also can't really judge a class which bases it's rankings on that either.

I think in the end we can't really count on any of this as exact data where we are in the hierarchy of programs. The recruiting services do a good job on the elite program level where the data on prospects is intensive and complete.

Twitter is doing a pretty good job on offers from the prospects so perhaps that is a way for us to keep better track of it.

12 minutes ago, BillySee58 said:

This is true to a good degree. But another problem with what Harry mentioned is people often stop at 3-stars when seeing how a player is rated. 247 has greatly expanded the delineation between 3-stars by classifying everyone between 80 and 90 a 3-star.

An 89 will almost assuredly have 5+ P5 offers, while an 80 could have just one. But for people who stop at 3-Star, it seems the same. Which leads to Harry’s point that we can’t use 3-Star as the bar for a quality UNT recruit anymore. Maybe more like 82.5 or some arbitrary number. Or offer lists.

Agree with both of your points.

I use to try to keep up on recruiting a lot more

Waiting till signing announcements because usually you had no knowledge of who NT was recruiting. Then reading the Texas Football magazine to see if any of these recruits were even mentioned, usually not.

Now, if anything there is too much information available. I kind of miss the mystery of the old days.

Texas Stranger · October 10, 2019

I still think there is only one true authority on recruiting, it's called a "scoreboard". The points put upon it, and opponents' points kept off, tell you how you are doing.

ADLER · October 19, 2019

Why are the Rivals rankings Click Here so different? Who's are more accurate? How, and why?

How can anybody accurately evaluate the thousands of 3* level players across the country for any of these services? And I am not putting down the recruiting ranking services as they are the best measuring tools available.

p_phelps · October 20, 2019

On 10/2/2019 at 9:52 AM, 97and03 said:

Ok, I just looked at all commits from 2016-19. Although the star inflation factor seems to be real, I think there is direct correlation with OFFER inflation. We have seen several articles the last few years that many schools are throwing out hundreds of offers, most of which are not valid in the end, ie. if the kid wanted to commit there would not really be a place for them. Add to this that the services are getting better at tracking offers to lower-end kids, especially because of twitter.

So my theory is that star ratings are at least in part based on offers and since offers have skyrocketed, so have 3 star ratings. That being said, it does look like the overall talent level (as recognized by others) is improving, and therefore "recruiting" is improving.

Please see the below charts where I tabulated FBS/P5 offers for our last four classes. I included recruits that never made it to campus, because it was still a case of getting the kid to agree to come here over other schools. Offers are as reported by 247. The FBS column is the recruit's FBS offers, not including ours. "P5" is a subset of those total offers. I did not include FCS.

If @BillySee58 would repost his grading system here in the thread, we could compare the classes that way also. I might even have time to go back and add the grades later.

2019

Recruit FBS "P5"

Deonte Simpson

7 1

Grayson Murphy
6 0

DeShawn Gaddie
10 0

Gabriel Murphy
6 0

Asher Alberding
5 1

Oscar Adaway
3 0

Taylor Jacobs
1 1

Khatib Lyles
11 4

Kealon Jackson
10 2

Damon Ward
4 0

Kenneth Dotson
1 0

Daxton Byers
4 0

Jevin Murray
13 2

Dorian Morris
6 0

Will Kuehne
3 1

Kevin Wood
3 0

Quinn Whitlock
0 0

John Brunner
1 0

Jimmy Walker
3 0

Chris Cassidy
1 0

Leandre Davis
2 0

Asher Frow
0 0

David Sow
6 1

Demeco Roland
0 0

2018

Recruit FBS "P5"
Alex Morris 7 2
Reggie Williams 10 6
Kevyon Davis 5 1
Jyaire Shorter 8 0
Austin Ogunmakin 2 0
Jermarcus White 0 0
Kason Martin 0 0
Deandre Torrey 2 0
Tim Faison 0 0
Jason Bean 4 0
Jaxon Gibbs 3 1
Derrick Shaw 2 0
Larry Nixon 0 0
Dayton LeBlanc 0 0
Jordan Hunt 0 0
Keelan Crosby 0 0
Daizion Carroll 0 0
Darrian McMillan 2 0
Cole Brown 0 0
Thomas Preston 4 0
Jordan Redfearn 0 0
Josh Sa'afi 0 0
Caleb Colvin 0 0

2017

Recruit FBS "P5"
Jalen Guyton 5 2
Cade Pearson 1 0
Jevin Pahinui 1 0
Tre Siggers 3 2
Jaelon Darden 6 1
Greg White 2 0
Cam Johnson 5 0
Kody Fulp 1 0
Tyreke Davis 1 0
Dakoda Newman 0 0
Dion Novil 0 0
Tony Krasniqi 3 0
Evan Johnson 0 0
Jacob Brammer 2 0
Brian Parish 2 0
Chris Thornton 0 0
Manase Mose 2 0
Sosaia Mose 0 0
Kemon Hall 0 0

2016

Recruit FBS "P5"
Nic Smith 4 2
Josh Wheeler 0 0
LaDarius Hamilton 2 0
TJ Henson 7 1
William Johnson 6 3
Rico Bussey 8 0
Cody Hayes 2 0
Jo Ozougwu 0 0
Jameel Moore 1 0
Deon Hair-Griffin 3 0
Chandler Anthony 2 0
Mason Fine 0 0
Dontavious Baulkman 0 0
EJ Ejiya 0 0
Tyler Wilson 0 0
Khairi Muhammad 0 0
Darius Turner 1 0
Eric Jenkins 6 2
Raveon Hoston 9 3
Anthony Wyche 0 0
Jalen Thomas 4 0
Quinetin Jackson 1 0