LITTLE ROCK — Stars.
For some it is all about the stars, and that is often one of the great debates nationwide when it comes to recruiting.
Players are awarded stars ranging from two to five, with five being the best.
Coaches worth their buyouts don’t put as much stock into how many stars a recruiting service assigns a teenager as the average fan does.
For instance, every video Arkansas receives on a prospect is reviewed by either an assistant coach or graduate assistant on Coach Bobby Petrino’s staff.
Arkansas receives more than 1,000 videos on prospects each year and they are graded by men who teach the game. The Razorbacks decide their recruitlng list based on the evaluation of those videos.
That might partially explain why Petrino recruits who he recruits. He trusts his knowledge and that of his staff more than a recruiting service.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t subscribe to services. He does.
It also probably means when you see a player with five stars attached to his name, he is probably on Petrino’s list. He is not afraid to get in the batter’s box and take the big swing at a fastball.
Still, stars are always a hot subject, and starting this fall our man Richard Davenport will add that to his recruiting list that runs at least once a week.
He thinks he will use Tom Lemming, who owns Max Preps sports.
Lemming doesn’t claim that his star system is perfect, because he knows no one’s is.
A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal, a respectable source at the very least, did a story on the currency of signing day — the stars.
The story focused on one of the more well-known recruiting services, Rivals.
According to the story, Rivals has a very defined application for the stars it assigns:
Two- or three-star athletes are the ones who Rivals believes will start for a year or two in college.
A four-star rating is reserved for those Rivals believes have All-America or at least all-conference potential.
A five-star rating is for those who Rivals believes will be a first-round NFL draft pick.
Yes, Rivals is rating college players on their draft status before most of them have done their laundry, shaved or driven a car.
The Wall Street Journal then took three classes — 2004 through 2006 — and researched how they were drafted.
More than half, 54 percent, of the five-star players were not drafted at all, let alone in the first round. About 81 percent of the four-star and 91 percent of the three-star players were not drafted.
Still, the stars are so important to the players and families that Rivals national recruiting analyst Mike Farrell said he has received threats of lawsuits and even physical threats for his ratings.
Farrell said he had never been offered a bribe.
Obviously, like the Wall Street Journal article, this is not a shot at Rivals or any of the recruiting services. Incidentally, there is a difference in the way a newspaper like the Democrat-Gazette covers recruiting as opposed to Rivals. Davenport and the Democrat-Gazette cover recruiting as a beat, or a sport, instead of being utilized as a service.
What the Wall Street Journal article showed is that recruiting is not an exact science, and, in fact, is far from it.
Several years ago, associate athletic director Bill Gray was watching football practice at the Broyles Complex with a reporter. Gray — a talented athlete in his day and an integral part of the Razorbacks operation for years — was asked what he thought about a freshman.
The exact words are not remembered, but the gist of it was that sometimes you get guys who look great in a uniform but can’t cut, have bad hands or don’t like to hit or be hit.
That recruiting classes shouldn’t be rated until after their third year of college football.
After reading the Wall Street Journal article, it is hard to argue with that philosophy.
Sports, Pages 19 on 02/29/2012