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I never really posted a lot of the final football recruiting class. My intent was a nice player-by-player review, but time just never presented itself. Instead, I'll give you the links to everyone else's reviews.
I do want to provide my thoughts on recruiting rankings. Every year this debate starts on "stars" and top 100 players, and class rankings. There is usually a camp that says they are very important and a good indicator of the future, and then there is another camp that says they don't mean squat.
My answer is somewhere in the middle. First you have to realize that Rivals.com and Scout.com and not big organizations and they cannot possibly get out in the field and scout a huge number of high school football players. Not possible. Second, these companies are not loaded with people who have played or coached the game. So how do they form their "expert" opinions? It is a combination of attending some games across the country (very limited), video tape of recruits that gets sent to them (always the "higlights"), and also watching closely which schools are offering which athletes. The assumption is obviously that if Miami, FSU and USC are offering a kid, he has to be better than a kid being offered from Troy, Ball St and East Carolina.
Not a terrible assumption. However, it brings to light this fact - to a large degree, Rivals.com and Scout.com (& others) are parasites, living off the evaluations and work done by college coaching staffs. They are feeding off the work of the coaching staffs.
So the obvious conclusion from this is that the coaching staffs are in the BEST position to evaluate high school players. So where is the value of Rivals and Scout? Well, the coaching staffs of each individual college are also limited. So there is no way THEY can get out and see all these players either. So the recruiting sites are aggregators. They create useful databases that are subscribed to by all athletic departments. In addition, they actually interview the players A LOT. So they provide the latest poop on what this recruit is saying about this school and that school. So make no mistake - it is a cheap and useful service for athletic departments. It also happens to feed a certain portion of the fan community that is really interested in what 17 year old kids are going to decide. So they earn a living. No problem. That's free enterprise.
Now what about these "star" rankings. This kid is a 4-star, this one a 5-star, but this kid is only a 1-star. What does it mean and is it really valid. First, 1-start really means that the recruiting service has not evaluated that player. It does NOT mean that he is worse than any 2 or 3-star kid. So you have to understand that when all the stars are added to determine how "good" your recruiting class is.
Here's how I would view the validity of the rankings. To me, the stars indicate the percentage chance that the kid has to be a bigtime player at the college level. A 5-star kid might have a 30% chance to be a bigtime player by the time he graduates. A 5-star kid probably has a 50% of being a solid contributor for 4 years. Does not mean he will. Just that his odds are better. And 30% might be generous for "bigtime". You would be amazed the number of 5-star kids that never panned out. A 4-star kid might have a 20% chance of becoming a bigtime player at the college level and a 40% chance of being a solid 4-year guy. So look at it as odds for success, since the recruiting service has a large margin of error and they players themselves cannot predict the future (injury, family situations, academic problems, etc).
Now, you also have to remember that there are fewer guys given the 5-star ranking than 4,3,2,1. So their numbers are smaller and they are clearly the best players at the HIGH SCHOOL level. Listen, the 5-star and largely the 4-star guys are not hard to find and pick out. The recruiting services can do it and the coaches can do it. Everyone wants to get these kids. It doesn't take a lot of coaching talent evaluation to find these guys. Everyone knows who these kids are - it is obvious. So the coaching job is just convincing them to come to your school. Listen, don't tell me it was an accident that Calvin Johnson won ACC Rookie of the Year and that he was our only 5-star recruit last year. He was a bigtime talent and everybody knew it. The recruiting services got that one right and generally they will get these top guys right more than the 2-3 star guys. The margin for error is smaller.
When you get down to 2-3 star players, things get very fuzzy. This is where the coach really earns his money. Because now it's not just about whooing the best guy at his position to your campus. It is about understanding talent, understanding team needs, understanding who is a "player". Finding those underrated guys. Finding those guys with the academic credentials. Finding the kids who might want to go to Georgia Tech.
The accuracy of the recruiting services really starts to breakdown here and it is harder for them to figure out who is going to be the real-deal. So the services start looking at stats - size, speed, etc. But there are also just a bunch more 2-3 star guys. So the quantity of players they are trying to evaluate becomes a challenge for them. And guess what - their target fan audience - is more interested in the top guys than the middle-of-the-road recruits. So that's where they focus.
Success at the Div I level is a combination of (some, not all):
1. Recruiting talented players to your school (selling the school)
2. Developing talent once it is at your school (size, speed, strength, conditioning)
3. Recognizing underrated players (as a coach, do you have a unique player evaluation system?)
4. Your system (Teaching kids how to play the game better than the next school)
5. Coaching staff
Coach Gailey believes that his staff has a better evaluation system for talent than most. Who am I to disagree? I have been impressed with some of the kids he has gotten to campus and some that have developed under his watch. He does seem to recognize underrated players in high school, and he does seem to have a system in place to develop these kids physically and to learn the game.
Coach believes that defense and a strong running game win championships. That's why the Defense always gets first choice of players. He believes you recruit for speed first and you sacrifice size for speed if you have to pick one. He believes that you look for guys that might be undersized for their position but have the frame to bulk up without sacrificing speed, particularly in the trenches. He looks for kids that have high character. I cannot argue that fact when I look at the quality of kids he is bringing in. Take Micheal Johnson - you are talking about one of the top 10 Tight End prospects in the country -scored something close to 1400 on his SAT and has a 4.0 GPA (although don't expect to see him at TE - look for DE first).
The bottom line is this - don't hang your hat on the recruiting rankings, but look at them. It is one piece of the puzzle when it comes to success on the field. When it comes to the true cream-of-the-crop players, it's a pretty good guide on who will have the best chance to be a real player. But for all those 2-3 star kids, it's a real crap shoot and in the end it is more about personal dedication, hard work and drive once they GET to campus than about what they did in high school. If Chan Gailey truly has a better evaluation system than most for finding the 2-3 star kids, and has a better system for developing players once they get to campus, and he has a better playing system to exploit their strengths, then we can win without having top-billing in the recruiting department by Rivals and Scout. It can be done and has been done. It is harder - make no mistake, but folks - THAT'S WHY YOU PLAY THE GAMES!!!!
Did GT have the 60th best recruiting class in the country? You don't know. I don't know. Rivals and Scout don't know. Call me in 4 years and let's talk.
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GT TRUSTS ITS OWN RATINGS
GAILEY HAS HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR CLASS
WELCOME TO THE 2005 GT CLASS
PAQUETTE TO WALK-ON TO GT
ANTHONY THREATTS TO WALK-ON TO GT
SIGNING DAY RE-CAP
RE-CAP: RECRUIT BY RECRUIT
TRIO OF SIGNINGS FINALIZES CLASS
TASHARD CHOICE
For those who do not know, Choice has petitioned both GT and Oklahoma to bypass his mandatory year to sit out after a transfer. Evidently only a hardship of some kind will allow this to happen. For it to go through, both schools have to sign-off. GT has already done that and the team is waiting on Okl for approval. Now you might be asking yourself - why be in a hurry to get him playing next season when we have seniors PJ Daniels and Chris Woods as well as Grant back there. Here's why. Choice has already redshirted one year so if he sits out a year he loses 1 year of eligibility and will only have 2 years to play. If he plays in the fall, he'll have 3 years to play on the flats. The old "5 to play 4" rule. So now you know.
VANCE WALKER SIGNS
CORDARO HOWARD LIKES ACC OPPORTUNITY
WILL MILLER SIGNS WITH GT
CHEROKEE'S MILLER SIGNS WITH TECH
MATT BRAMAN SIGNS WITH GT
VOSS SIGNS WITH GT
CARLOS THOMAS KEEPS OPTIONS OPEN
Here's more on the story of why he claims to have left GT.
GRADING THE QB POSITION - FROM SCOUT.COM
GRADING THE SAFETY POSITION - FROM SCOUT.COM
GT STRUGGLES DOWN THE STRETCH
Georgia Tech struggled down the stretch run of recruiting, but they signed several key players that look like bonafied stars on the next level. Anthony Barnes (left) of Cartersville High School is ranked one of the Top 10 prospects in the state of Georgia regardless of position. He has the size of a linebacker, but will get his first shot at safety. Helping Barnes on defense will be linebacker Taalib Tucker from Westlake High School in Atlanta. Trying to get a more stable offensive attack for the Jackets should be made a lot easier with the addition of two terrific tight ends in Michael Johnson of Dallas County High School in Alabama and Colin Peek from The Bolles School in Florida. Johnson is a dynamic athlete that came into his own as a senior and ended up ranked the #2 prospect in the state by Scout.com. Peek has the prototypical size at 6-5 and 250 pounds to be a dominating blocker as well as a safety valve for the Tech quarterback.
SIGNINGS AROUND THE ACC
WHO WON THE SOUTH?
TOP 10 RECRUITING CLASSES
SIGNING DAY DISAPPOINTMENTS
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
3. Georgia Tech – The Yellow Jackets have been to a bowl game in each of Chan Gailey's three seasons, but recruiting remains a question mark. A year after landing some highly regarded players, including ACC rookie of the year Calvin Johnson, Georgia Tech finished just 62nd in the Rivals.com team rankings, 11th among ACC teams. The Jackets landed 19 prospects, but their star average was just 2.37. They also lost out on coveted teammates Maurice Wells and Marvin Sapp from Sandalwood High School in Jacksonville, Fla.
ANOTHER ACC RE-CAP
Here, David Kelly, the former GT assistant who is now at Duke, is listed as one of the top 25 recruiters in the country by Rivals.com.