Interesting post off of the OU Scout.com Site

[Harry]

The following excerpt is from an interview taken from the OU Scout.com site:

One OU coach has told us this about recruit rankings:

"Basically they're a joke. If they were true, we, (and other top schools), would recruit off of them. It takes us several months of evaluations to separate the best from the rest. But these recruit rankings pop up and many people start thinking they're the ten commandments or something.

Sure everyone can pick out an Adrian Peterson, but there aren’t many of those out there. And generally, the skill positions are a bit easier for coaches and fans to identify, but even at that, how to you find the top ten - twenty in the country?

That's who we set our sights on. You have to - to stay at the level that we're at.

But many times, even with skill athletes, it's his supporting cast that makes him stand out. Coaches have to consider that. We have to know that a quarterback has a great receiver, or maybe he has none - that makes a huge difference in his completion percentage. How good is his offensive line, or the competition he's playing?

At many power programs, kids are sometimes a backup until their senior year. I mean what do you do with a kid who is waiting in the wings but has a great player a year or two ahead of him?

In the offensive and defensive line, many kids are dominant because of a size mismatch. But in college, that won't be the case. Technique and skill are bigger factors, and many times you don't see those things clearly until their senior seasons."

As to current prospects, (and their rankings), another OU coach said;

"Who does these things? (Recruit Rankings). Are you kidding me? It's a total joke when you have guys who are dominant ranked behind good, but not great players."

So how do the average fans determine who's best?

"Just look at who's offering them, and who's not. That's the first clue. But most of the higher ranked guys are going to come from the well known stomping grounds. Those guys show up early, because they are easier to identify.

We (coaches), can't visit every school and every hamlet either. So many times, we see a prospect on film when we are looking at someone else. We make a few calls, send someone out to who knows where, and suddenly we have someone who very few people know about.

Now here at Oklahoma, when we offer - it's usually all over the internet in about three hours, so sure, there are times when we prefer to keep a kid quiet. Why tell your opponent about finding a gold mine?

So a lot of times someone will pop up from nowhere and people think maybe we've lost our minds. Are you kidding me? We have twenty five scholarships a year and we don't pass them out like Kleenex!

When we offer some obscure prospect somewhere you can bet he's probably playing at a small school, or at a school with zero talent around him.

We signed a receiver like that last year, and how was he ranked? But watch that guy and I'll guarantee you in four years he'll out perform almost every guy on the top ranked receiver list last year. You can repeat that story at least two or three times every year.

So yeah, we look at the rankings, but they're primarily always a source of amusement for us."