The recruiting services put so little time and effort into non-power conference teams' recruits that their ratings are completely useless.

Someone else. It was someone who, per Solich, could transfer, and if he does transfer, they're pretty confident he'll transfer to Ohio.

Any player from these parts that may want to come home?

Well, reflecting how little effort the expend, Rivals seems to have eliminated the Ohio page entirely, along with most of the rest of the MAC, about two weeks ago. Here's their MAC ranking, and you'll note that only four of the MAC teams are still clickable:
https://n.rivals.com/team_rankings/2016/mid-america

I presume this reflects their acknowledgement that they really aren't providing much coverage anyway. I wonder if the MAC teams for whom they still have a recruiting page are the MAC teams that have active forums on Rivals?

Ok, I'll bite. Joe Burrow is the only person that makes sense. Ohio shouldn't be having any contact with players in other programs talking about transferring - until they declare they are transferring. But you can't stop a player in another program from talking to their dad. But it doesn't make sense to me, given the praise he has gotten from OSU.

Ok, I just looked up transfers contact rules. http://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes/current/permission-c...

If the student got a written permission from their current school, they can talk before transfer is announced.

If he left the program in 2014 and does transfer to OHIO would he not be immediately eligible since he didn't play varsity football last year?

Walsh redshirted in football at Boston College during the 2013-14 school year. He quit football in August 2014 or sometime around there and opted to walk on to the baseball team in the spring of his second year and was a redshirt freshman in baseball that year as a left-handed pitcher. He did not play. He is not on the 2016 baseball roster. There are two students by the name of James Walsh in the student directory, including one in the class of 2017 and in the College of Arts and Sciences, which matches his profile information, but both his name and college are very common.

So this is his third year in college (if he is enrolled this year) and he has yet to actually play a game in any sport there. He's spent one year on each team. I'd think if he were to transfer, he'd be a redshirt junior in the fall eligible immediately.



From This Week News from an article one year ago yesterday:

Another athlete who made a late switch just before signing day but then had things turn out differently than he expected was 2013 Coffman graduate James Walsh. He originally committed to play football for Ohio but eventually switched to Boston College, where he didn't appear in any games as a freshman and then left the team just before fall practice last year.

He didn't leave school, though, and instead will walk on to the baseball team this spring. Walsh played three seasons of varsity baseball at Coffman.

"I was committed to Ohio University for a good while and I kind of flipped at the last second, and I think I made the wrong move to football," Walsh said. "I just didn't see eye to eye with my own position coach. I thought about transferring but decided I wanted to stay at Boston College because it's a good school."

Here was his BC baseball profile from last season: http://bceagles.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=277&path =

The services aren't "worthless", but they are far more accurate at the top than at the bottom. Why? They are for-profit companies, so they put the bulk of their emphasis where they make the most money. Of the top 20 teams, how many of their fans subscribe to their services? A lot. How man MAC fans do? Not many, I would guess. We're an afterthought, and nothing more, and we always will be.

A couple services, Scout.com and 247Sports, do put at least minimal effort into covering the MAC, and we should be grateful for the attention we do get. I don't think they are ever totally wrong, nor totally right, and they do give us something for discussion, as well as information on what the other MAC schools are up to.

My primary thought is that we just need to keep in mind that the service ratings aren't gospel, and we need to remember that, whether the class is highly rated or not. Personally, I think it would be interesting for us to spend more time looking at the film ourselves, and less time reading the ratings, and see if we, as individuals, do as well or better.

This has been proven incorrect quite a few times now. If you look at the percentages of 5 star, 4 star, 3 star recruits who pan out and play well the higher star levels always win.

There is just a whole lot more 3 stars than 4 and 5's so it seems like they all play above their rankings. But they don't and it is much better to have a bunch of studs. Ask Alabama.

Not that I disagree that the program needs better players but the 5 of 25 3 star number above is inaccurate. Of the 20 kids not considered 3 star, 4 of the them are non-scholarship, another 2 are grad transfers that were either 3 or 4 star. So I would say the more accurate representation is 5 of 19 or 7 of 21 depending on how you want to look at it.

No need to misrepresent what I'm saying here....just trying to clarify the data. I would love to see more kids with higher ratings, I think we all would.

Now that I look back at 247sports I see some rankings have already changed. Trotter and Fernandez both downgraded from .81 or so to .77 and .75 respectively. So now we only have three 3 star guys! I'm not sure if any others moved or not.

That's the other problem that's not been discussed. The services are often basing their rating off what schools offer and what school a player signs with instead of actually trying to evaluate talent. A 3 star guy on Tuesday should be a 3 star guy on Wednesday whether he signs with Ohio State, Ohio University, or Ohio Dominican. I don't believe for a second that they watched tape on either of these kids and decided they deserved to be downgraded. It seems like they're doing this to manually adjust their overall class rankings.

I am not going to pretend that I know anything about recruiting because I know less than zilch, nor do I really care. Well, I guess I care in that I'm interested, but that's about it.

My point is, WMU is held as the gold standard for MAC recruiting. Why? Because some service says they continually recruit a lot of 3-4 star players. Yet, the real reality is that with all these classes WMU has finished as exactly as high in their respective division as Ohio has in its, second. I agree, they have demolished Ohio. OK. So? Who in the last 3 years hasn't demolished Ohio? (well, Miami, ha ha ha!) I don't equate defeating Ohio as the same as winning a MACC, which according to some, is the only thing that counts and is the only goal any coach should have.

Let's let this play out. Maybe Ohio's class is good, maybe it's not, I don't know. Time will tell. But I could truly care less where some recruiting service has Ohio ranked among the MAC schools. And maybe WMU will win the MACC this year. But to date they've done no better within the MAC than Ohio has.

And, speaking for all the 71s, I hope you are right! I will be there.