Seeing Stars

2 comments so far July 11, 2006 by Steve Hanway

As the recruiting season moves along, Rivals.com has begun to expand the number of players they have graded. So we now can see more of the players “star” ratings. Of course, players routinely outperform or underperform their rankings, but in the aggregate these rankings do seem predictive in a similar manner to the NFL draft.

Five-star players are the first rounders. Sure, there are busts but this is also where the undeniable superstar prospects reside (think of John Elway, Dan Marino, Peyton Manning, Barry Sanders, etc.) A recent Husker example would be Demorrio Williams who came in as a hot prospect and finished his career as an All-Big 12 player and major playmaker.

Four-star players are the rest of the day one picks. Guys you can count on (barring injury or mental meltdowns) to be starters, if not stars, on your team (Joe Montana and Will Shields were third-rounders, for example). Fabian Washington is a recent Husker example, who played three seasons at Nebraska, garnering some all-conference mentions, before leaving early to become a first round NFL pick. Since there are only so many five-star prospects around, these guys are courted by every college team.

Three-star players are like second-day draft picks. Usually, there is some question marks (e.g. size or speed) that keep them from going on day one, but plenty of them ascend to a superstar level (Tom Brady and Terrell Davis come to mind). They usually require some time to develop. Adam Carriker is an example of a three-star athlete who developed into a star player (and All-Big 12 performer) for Nebraska.

Two-star athletes are like the free agents signed right after the draft. They don’t equate to a competitive advantage because they are available to virtually every team. But if scouted and developed well, they can become star players. Priest Holmes is an example of a free agent that made it big in the NFL. It’s harder to think of a real recent Husker two-star success story, lending some credence to the fact that this groups is hardly the crème of the crop. But Tierre Green and Greg Austin have been important contributors to Nebraska in the past couple of seasons.

One-star athletes equate to the players that are not signed as free agents after the draft but instead must prove themselves in NFL Europe or arena leagues first. Guys like Kurt Warner or Adam Vinatieri have made it big after languishing in the “minor leagues”. Andrew Shanle is the only recent example of a real contributor out of this group.

Having spelled out what these rankings mean, we can get a better sense of recruiting progress so far. As usual, Texas has landed pretty much an entire class of four/five-star prospects, an enviable class to be sure. Meanwhile, Nebraska is more in the three/four-star range. Good enough to compete nationally, but not the very top class either. Meanwhile, I’m not surprised to see Kansas State has more of a two/three-star flavor. I’m not sure what the rush is to lock in these two-star athletes that would seemingly be available at any time, but at least they’ve got a lot kids. Sort of reminds me of the days I’d rush through my homework in a sloppy manner so I could enjoy what was on TV.

For Nebraska, most of the class is still to be assembled, but it’s nice to see the Huskers off to a decent start.

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