...The concept does not seem that difficult to understand to me so I am not sure why people keep saying we don't need 3-star players or we do need that many of them.
No one disagrees in theory, the problem comes in practice. Say that 5 people review a player, and 2 say he is 3 stars, and 3 say he is 2 stars, is he 2 stars, or 3? Say a player is rated in his Junior season as a wide receiver as 2 stars, and moves to Safety, and excels, but isn't re-rated, is he 2 stars, or 3?
While we are sitting around waiting for the 2014 class to come in, I'm sure that the staff is already starting to think some about the 2015 class. They watch film, and they evaluate players, many or most of which have not been evaluated yet by the ratings services. Over the next three months they will issue offers for players for the 2015 class, and I'm sure that when they issue the offers, the offers will all go to players that the staff thinks are 3-star (or better) players. Will the ratings services agree, when they come along later and rate these players? In some cases yes, in other cases no.
If you go through the list of players to whom Ohio made offers last winter you will find a few 5-star players, some 4-star players, some 3-star players, and some 2-star players. But, note something about this group of 2-star players. They aren't randomly selected 2-star players, they are players that the Ohio coaching staff thinks are 3-star players, yet the service thinks is 2-stars. Which is right? It turns out that the staff is often right, which is why we find that in real life, many of the 2-star players Ohio recruits are quite good.
As an example of a case where they didn't agree, consider the case of Durrell Bristol/Wood last year. He got lowly 2-star ratings from all the services, and for that matter didn't even pick up any All-Conference honors, much less All-District or All-State honors. Clearly, he can play. To start on the offensive line as a true Freshman is something that is very rarely done. I would argue that clearly he should have been rated 3 stars, or better. Why were the services wrong in his case? Were the services confused because of his name change from Bristol to Wood? Did they overlook him because he was a lineman for a very bad team? It's hard to know, but miss him they did.
One advantage that Ohio suddenly has had the last 2 years is that they have been getting a lot of early acceptances, especially from the State of Ohio. As long as that continues, they can slowly raise their standards each year, trying for an every higher quality group of recruits. For 2015 I would argue that they have the opportunity to go after an especially high quality of recruit. The 2015 class replaces the outgoing 2010 class, so it will be very small, perhaps 15 players. Therefore the staff should be more selective in terms of who they offer.
Last Edited: 1/24/2014 7:10:23 PM by L.C.