Here's more data for you. When you deal with recruiting rankings, you have so many variables. Ratings come and go, people change, standards change. Is there inflation in ratings? Numbers changes? You never know. As an example, Rivals used to rate players from 5.0 and up. Then one year they changed to 5.2 and up. Now they really don't rate the MAC at all. The one constant through all this is competitive offers. Sure, there are a few more teams, but not that many more to change the numbers of offers kids get significantly. So, how how many other offers have players turned down to accept at Ohio? Is it changing over time?

2005 <.3
2006 .93
2007 .84
2008 2.00
2009 1.24
2010 1.08
2011 2.50
2012 2.71
2013 2.28
2014 2.28
2015 2.31
2016 3.00
2017 3.38 (thus far)

I have no problem using ratings services to compare teams in a conference in a given year, but I have a little more question about using it to track historical changes. My preferred rating is the composite number from 247Sports, which includes other ratings in the composite. Nevertheless, here's how the composite has varied for Ohio since it came out:

2012 .7741
2013 .7618
2014 .7597
2015 .7733
2016 .7731
2017 .8036 (thus far, including only players who have been rated).

How do the various teams in the MAC stack up this year, so far, in terms of the average for players actually rated. Note that this rating ignores quantity, and focuses only on quality. Ohio has a smaller class thus far than most other MAC teams, and if they fill their class with lower-rated players, their average could change significantly. By contrast, WMU's class is already full, at 25 players, and shouldn't change. Here are the top MAC teams:

WMU - .8127 (25 players)
Toledo - .8051 (19 players)
Ohio .8036 (8 rated players, 1 unrated)
BG .7927 (16 players)
Miami .7920 (14 players)
NIU .7861 (17 players)

Here are the rankings by 247Sports for Ohio's recruits thus far. Two star is 70-79, 3 star is 80-89, and so on:
Ellison 88 (composite, including ratings from other services .8415)
Mitchell 84 (composite .8281)
Brooks 82 (composite .8154)
Minter 80 (composite .7924)
Cherry 80 (composite .7924)
Jackson 79 (composite .7898)
Keszei 81 (composite .7882)
Newton 75 (composite N/A)
Drake: Not Rated Yet

For what it's worth, in my ongoing evaluation of the various recruiting services and how the players actually turn out, here is what I have found:

ESPN: Unrated players on average have been better than rated players, but their 3-star rated players are better than their 2 star players. The problem is that they rate so few players that go to G5 schools that their ratings are essentially meaningless for G5 schools.

Scout.com: All players that Ohio recruits end up rated 2 star or 3 star. As such there is very little discrimination to begin with. To make matters worse, the Ohio recruits that have been rated 3 stars have performed on average no differently than recruits rated 2 stars. I consider the Scout.com ratings to be completely useless as far as Ohio classes are concerned.

Rivals: Here there is a bit more discrimination, with most Ohio recruits rated from 5.2 to 5.7. Unfortunately, if there is a correlation, it is negative. Players with the lowest rating from them, 5.2, have outperformed players rated 3-stars by them, on average. The problem is that, like the other services, they dedicate most of their resources to P5 teams. In fact, they now treat G5 schools the same as they treat FCS schools, and no longer even have a recruiting page for them at all.

247Sports: They actually attempt to rate most of the recruits from G5 schools, and they rate them on a scale with a lot of discrimination, from 70 to 100. How have they done? Players rated 78 and up by them have usually been very good players. Players rated 71-77 by them have not been as good. Players that are unrated by them (rating of 70) have done worse than rated players. Thus there is a clear correlation, and it is positive, the only service for which this is true.

Competitive Offers: This has a very strong correlation. Players with 3 or more offers have performed distinctly better on average than players with 1 or 2, and those have been better than players with none.

Thus, for Ohio recruiting, there are two good predictors of future success. One is the 247Sports rating (not their composite, which is corrupted by bad ratings from other services), and the number and quality of other offers. So, how does this class stack up in terms of quality (yes, we know, it's small, and needs more recruits)? From a standpoint of 247Sports ratings, as given above, it looks very, very good. As far as competitive offers, again, it looks very, very good, since everyone but the JUCO have multiple offers.

I do like Hagan, but, not more than J. Johnson, Basham, B. Brown, Laseak, Carpenter, Crutcher, Poling, Watson, Sayles, Mangen, Carrie or the Moore bros, etc. They have all been, in my estimation, "good enough" for Ohio. I also like 3 star guys like Russell, Lowery and McCray, Duckworth and Windham, etc. I just believe in the coaches own evaluations over the services.

As of now (pm 12/11/16), this thread lists us with 9 commits.

Hustlebelt.com at this time shows the following commits:
Akron 12
Ball 18
BG 15
Beefalo 8
CMU 17
EMU 9
Kents 13
Miami 15
NIU 17
OHIO 8
FATMAN 19
WMU 24.

Certainly, there's no info about quality here. And, there's no info about philosophy and situation...filling in a short list of needs vs. many holes to fill.

Maybe we can get one of those two guys who have tweeted that they just got an Ohio offer, number 17 and 20. I know we would like to get the best players, but seriously why waste the time and money making offers to these guys? Are we just trying to spend all of our recruiting budget? Call me realistic on this one.

For those of you saying we have to think big, I get it. Please tell me why we should waste money and precious time on recruits that we have no chance of getting. From a purely business standpoint, why would we waste those precious resources? Name one 17-20 offer guy who we have signed and/or actually showed up.

I'll be very happy to say I'm wrong if we sign one of these guys.

You got me there Ted. I didn't look up the offers so I'll back off that one.

The part that confuses me in all of this, is that our main staff has been here for 12 years. Somehow we have only have 2 kids from Ohio. You would think we have made inroads by now to recruit Ohio, or folks with Ohio ties. Surprised it's not as much like Texas where coaches from top high schools get plucked by the colleges.

The 2016 class had a heavy emphasis on Ohio. According to this website, of the 22 high school players recruited and signed, 11 were from Ohio.

I have a recruiting database, and it includes my evaluation of the players after they got to Ohio. For grins, I sorted it by state. For states with at least a few recruits, and the time period 2006-14, here is my average rating:

Oklahoma (3 players) 4.0
Nebraska (10) 3.3
DC (4) 3.0
Ohio (70) 2.9
Florida (8) 2.8
Virginia (9) 2.7
PA (13) 2.6
Georgia (8) 2.5
California (6) 2.3
W. Virginia (3) 1.7

Even more interesting, if you split Ohio into 2006-2011 and 2012-2014, the numbers are very different. Ohio from 2006-2011 was 2.7, while from 2012-14 it was 3.2.

From this exercise, I take two things away. First, and most clear, is that Ohio has not only been getting more players from Ohio in recent years, they have been getting better ones. I attribute this, as much as anything, to Ohio's regional camps. When they can actually see the players in camp, they can more accurately assess exactly who they want, and they have been getting very good players that way. If Ohio sees a significant long term drop in who they are getting from in-state, it will not be a good thing, because in-state has been their major source for high-quality players since 2012.

The second thing I take away is that when recruits come from a recruiting hotbed like Georgia, Florida, California, or Texas, that doesn't automatically mean they are good, but among those, Florida has been the best. Nebraska and Oklahoma have been very good, too, but neither has been a significant source of players in recent years.

It never seems to end up as small a class as it looks going in, does it? There always seems to be a lot of churning nowadays, much like basketball. The transfer rule seems to be part of it, and the QB situation has become ridiculous.

But if there's always churn (guys no longer on the team for whatever reason) then the net really is the lower figure.

So, if this year's class is, say, 22 guys, ya gotta figure it will effectively end up as some lower number....as a lesser number of guys who actually end up playing.

I'm not criticizing at all. I'm just trying to point out the net reality which seems to always occur.

That's football.

Possible commit?
https://n.rivals.com/content/prospects/maple/183888

We've made an offer and he has the #w17ness hashtag on his twitter profile.
https://twitter.com/Original_Carey6