National Signing Day 2010: A Recruiting Primer on the Star Rating System

With National Signing Day approaching on Feb. 3, we continually see fans talk and comment on how many four and five-star players their teams have signed.  The trash talking begins and fans go back and forth over the team rankings and losing recruits to their hated rival.  They boast about last-minute commits that they never expected to get.

People get upset when their program is not ranked highly in the recruiting rankings, or recruits choose to sign with other schools and not the one they root for.  They tab this as some sort of personal failing on the coach because he was not able to get the recruit to commit and stay committed throughout the recruiting season.

What typical fans fail to understand is the fact that those recruiting rankings are not an accurate indicator of future glory, and can be quite inaccurate in projecting the best players.  High school kids are more unpredictable now more than ever, and they tend to flock to the schools that are winning at the time they graduate.

We rarely see the kid who wants to play football for a school that is struggling because he wants to help restore them to their previous status. Instead we have the "New England Patriot" effect where a program starts to win and recruits want to be part of it. 

Many of these recruits sign with these schools without properly assessing the situation.  If you are a defensive back and the school already has 12 other guys that play your position from their previous two recruiting classes, why would you sign there?

This can be a good or bad situation for the schools and players that are involved. You would think that signing bunches of five-star players would ultimately be a good thing, but in reality only about 50-60 percent of these players end up being as good as all the hype surrounding their recruitment. 

If you consider all of the off-field problems, academic issues, and leaving for the NFL that percentage drops a bit more. 

In order to provide a small explanation as to the reason for this you have to know how high school football is set up.  Let us take a look at how the structure of high school football is relevant to the recruiting rankings.

I will use the Florida high school football system since that is the one I am most familiar with. You basically have six classifications (1A-6A) that are based on the enrollment size of the school.  We all know most schools have students assigned based on location and living distance from the school for the most part.  This practice is fairly common in other states as well.

There are a few exceptions to this as private schools can receive students from anywhere if the parents choose to send their child to the school.  The classifications have nothing to do with how good a school is. Often it turns out to be potluck on how competitive a district will be.

Private schools are typically classified in the 1A and 2A classifications because they don't have high enrollment, but they can recruit players legally unlike public schools.  What ends up happening in these divisions is you have smaller public schools with a set talent pool to pull from playing against private schools who hand pick their players.  To be fair there have been several recent incidents of public high school programs finding loopholes to "recruit" players as well.

That is why you often see college players who have never lost a game in high school; many of them come from schools that have this advantage. 

These players rack up tremendous stats and wins playing against teams that have a decided disadvantage against them. In turn colleges come in droves to recruit the players from these schools. 

To illustrate this point we will analyze the high school career of Brock Berlin who was arguably one of the most sought after quarterback recruits in the history of high school football.

Berlin attended Evangel Christian Academy where he led them to three consecutive Louisiana state championships.  This season Evangel Christian Academy once again won the Louisiana 2A state championship, with most of their wins by large margins.  Let’s look at the scores against the teams in their division:

Game One

Evangel Christian 50, Calvary Baptist 7

Game Two

Evangel Christian 47, Homer 7

Game Three

Evangel Christian 54, Lakeside 0

Game Four

Evangel Christian 52, North Caddo 0

Game Five

Evangel Christian 48, Springhill 0

The teams in their division only scored a combined 14 points against them in five games, indicating that the division is unbalanced.  They have a quarterback who threw for over 3,300 yards and 50 touchdowns this season as a junior!

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia that talks about the history of the school’s football program:  “Evangel is probably best known nationally for its football team winning over a dozen state championships since 1993. In a recent book cataloging the top 12 dynasties of high school football, Evangel was given a prominent place.”

Obviously this football program is very successful, but I would argue that the success of Brock Berlin in high school had more to do with the status of the program and whom they play more than his individual prowess.  Berlin had an average college career; he couldn’t beat out Rex Grossman at Florida, and won the starting job over Derek Crudup at Miami, which was no major feat.

There are other issues that arise from the recruit worship that seems to be the norm these days.  Many highly recruited players do not have a good work ethic, comfortable instead making plays on their talent alone.  This breeds a sense of entitlement in some players, which causes them to put their own interests above the teams' they are going to play for.

In recent years we have witnessed several high school recruits who have "handlers"—typically a family member or friend—who serve as low budget agents for them.  The fact that many coaches play to this and will make accommodations for these players if they just sign on the dotted line is disturbing.  Many of these players end up transferring the minute they are not named a starter or do not get the playing time they want.

As the anticipation of National Signing Day grows, and fans merely look at the number of stars next to the players committed to their team, they might want to do a little more research into where these players are coming from and what competition they played against.  

Brock Berlin is only one example, but I have seen this happen many times before.  There are plenty of good college players that come out of these programs, but a three-star player from a competitive high school district may turn out better than a five-star player from the traditional powerhouse program that has no competition in their district.

Enjoy National Signing Day, and don’t fret if your team does not have a top-five recruiting class.  With the right coaching staff in place and a player who has the desire to get better it is likely the player will reach their full potential. 

The star rating system is merely something for the fans and media to debate and pick apart.  The best coached players will make the team you root for successful no matter how many stars they have next to their name on signing day.