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Rivals overrated

C

Capello

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Sep 21, 2010
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I noticed some of the posters on here think rivals is some great organization, take it from someone who knows they are not. My older son who played college football for free was over looked by rivals, and James who won every award possible including all state and the big 33 in Pa. was not even on Rivals radar. Now our younger son who is going on official visits as a linebacker also is not on their radar.Someone said the Jantz is now a 3 star, that is because he signed with ISU. I remember being a a nike invite only camp at Penn State and rivals was there and i heard one of the guys say to a rivals official to keep an eye on one of the campers and that is how they guy got on their radar. So my friends if you have a son who you want to be recruited don't panic if they are not high on rivals, it usually works out. Anyway hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year

Tom Capello
 
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Rivals and other "recruiting" sites are designed for one thing and one thing only. That is to convince the football fan into paying for information that in the end amounts basically to nothing. Especially when the information is pretty much public knowledge and is classified as "premium" or "insider". It's mostly speculation and conjuncture wrapped up in a pretty little package for joe blow college sport want to be's and for others to capitalize on the willingness of others to pay for public information.
 
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Rivals is overrated? Look at how they rank the last 4 years of recruiting classes. Notice something? Teams that recruit top talent generally do a lot better than teams that finish in the 50's. Will they miss some kids? Sure. It's impossible for them to know all the kids with talent in the US. But they generally always know of the really great athletes and do a good job considering
 
GoShow97 said:
Rivals and other "recruiting" sites are designed for one thing and one thing only. That is to convince the football fan into paying for information that in the end amounts basically to nothing. Especially when the information is pretty much public knowledge and is classified as "premium" or "insider". It's mostly speculation and conjuncture wrapped up in a pretty little package for joe blow college sport want to be's and for others to capitalize on the willingness of others to pay for public information.
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I have a feeling you've had a conversation about your hatred for conformity at some point in your life.

With that being said, having a subscription to Rivals is basically the same as paying for a magazine subscription.
 
Clones85' said:
Rivals is overrated? Look at how they rank the last 4 years of recruiting classes. Notice something? Teams that recruit top talent generally do a lot better than teams that finish in the 50's. Will they miss some kids? Sure. It's impossible for them to know all the kids with talent in the US. But they generally always know of the really great athletes and do a good job considering
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I could tell you that without rivals, teams that are getting the 5 stars generally have a history of getting that type of kid and tend to continue to do well. I think the TCU's & Boise's of the world are great examples that there is a ton of talent out there that rivals and other services have no clue about.

That said, I understand why, it is an impossible job to evaluate the 100,000+ high school football playing seniors every year and so they have to rely on somebody or something to put a kid on their radar. Beyond that, there are a lot of 2 star awards that basically mean we have no idea how good this kid is.
 
You can argue that Rivals is somewhat overrated. They aren't perfect and never will be. However, you can't say that they are useless. I love being able to get some information on recruiting classes. Without rivals I wouldn't have that. Personally I am not willing to pay for extra info, but you can get a lot out of the free info.

Rivals is just for the fans. The coaches use their own evaluations to determine who they are going after. That's why you will see overated players not get the big offers and players without a profile on Rivals commiting to a good BCS school. You will also see Rivals do their due diligence and reevaluate a lot of players after they commit. That's why Jantz jumped to a 3 star.

Is Rivals the best site ever? No. Are they useless? No.
Do Stars mean everything? Hell no. Are they meaningless? Hardly.
 
The scouting services don't catch everyone. That's not even debatable, but more often than not they are right.

Take a look at their highly rated guys over th past few years. They usually turn out.

cyhipphopp said it best. They aren't everything but they are certainly something.
 
Also, their job isn't to determine "who pans out" either

they are evaluating high school talent and predicting how soon they will be able to contribute. Just because Colt McCoy goes from 3 star to the NFL doesn't mean he wasn't a 3-star caliber in high school.

So much can change between Sr year of HS and Sr year of college. Heck, look at Ryan Leaf, no one predicted that, and those were NFL scouts!
 
If you checked the number of 5 star recruits that ended up being All Americans and compared that with 2-3 star players, I'd bet that there are way more 2-3 star players. That's the argument you hear a lot from the anti-rivals/scout people. What they fail to mention are there are way, way, way more 2-3 star players than there are 5 star players. The % of 5 star players who become all americans is better than 4 star players, which is better than 3 star players, which is better than 2 star players.

That doesn't mean that there aren't 5 star busts or 2 star AA's but as a whole it's far more likely that a 5 star player will turn out great than a two star player.

The thing that these recruiting sites have a hard time doing is projecting players at different positions. Any idiot can recognize the very best players at a position. The good coaches can see a player play one position in highschool but get him for a completely different position.
 
YOU KIDS PLAY NICE!!!






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Capello said:
I noticed some of the posters on here think rivals is some great organization, take it from someone who knows they are not. My older son who played college football for free was over looked by rivals, and James who won every award possible including all state and the big 33 in Pa. was not even on Rivals radar. Now our younger son who is going on official visits as a linebacker also is not on their radar.Someone said the Jantz is now a 3 star, that is because he signed with ISU. I remember being a a nike invite only camp at Penn State and rivals was there and i heard one of the guys say to a rivals official to keep an eye on one of the campers and that is how they guy got on their radar. So my friends if you have a son who you want to be recruited don't panic if they are not high on rivals, it usually works out. Anyway hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year

Tom Capello
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So, Tom, what brought this on? I hope that you aren't thinking about marketing James.
 
Capello said:
I noticed some of the posters on here think rivals is some great organization, take it from someone who knows they are not. My older son who played college football for free was over looked by rivals, and James who won every award possible including all state and the big 33 in Pa. was not even on Rivals radar. Now our younger son who is going on official visits as a linebacker also is not on their radar.Someone said the Jantz is now a 3 star, that is because he signed with ISU. I remember being a a nike invite only camp at Penn State and rivals was there and i heard one of the guys say to a rivals official to keep an eye on one of the campers and that is how they guy got on their radar. So my friends if you have a son who you want to be recruited don't panic if they are not high on rivals, it usually works out. Anyway hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year

Tom Capello
Click to expand...

Every recruiting service is going to have hits or misses. I don't know how Rivals compares to others when it comes to true results, but none of them are going to be perfect.
 
I understand what you are saying, but I feel you are aiming your disappointment in the wrong direction. There is absolutely no way Rivals can keep tabs on all the high school kids playing ball out there and remain profitable.

A lot of it has to do with the kid/coach/parents doing something to get noticed by Rivals. For instance, 2 Iowa commits, Anthony Ferguson and Jim Poggi weren't even rated when they committed to Iowa, largely because their coach hadn't sent any tape into Rivals. Once the tape was sent in, they were both 3 stars (One could argue that they only got a 3 stars because they committed to Iowa, but I digress)

So as sad as it is, getting noticed and evaluated by a recruiting service is a lot like every day life. You can't sit back, do nothing, and then complain when you don't get the desired result. Perhaps you could talk with your son's coach and put together a highlight tape and have him send it in.
 
Rivals isn't overrated or underrated. Its not a professional recruiting service, its a paying entertainment web site, that's it. Like people have said, its like having a subscription to a magazine like SI.
 
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