Extreme Variance in Player Ratings

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Gophergrandpa

Gophergrandpa

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There is sometimes anguish on this board over the ratings of players the Gophers recruit and sign. The ratings most of us look to are 247, which offers--at least for me--the simplest access. But 247's simplicity of access does not confer canonical status to its rankings. There are at least three recognized rankings of HS players that are in common use: 247, Rivals/On3 and ESPN. Each of these services produces a top 300 rating for HS classes and rates hundreds more HS players. The ratings variation among these three services can be astounding.

Our top recruit per 247, Howie Johnson, DL, is a "consensus" guy. 247 ranks him as a 4* (94), the 19th DL and 141st best player in the country. Rivals/On3 has him at a 4* (91), the 25th DL and 272nd best player in the country. ESPN has him as a 4* and 250th best player in the country (ESPN uses a different numerical rating--best player in the country is a 93) so I'm not using that number.

Our 2nd top recruit per 247 is Roman Voss, TE, who per 247 is a 4* (91) and 14th TE in the country, but doesn't make 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Voss as a 3* (89), the 33rd TE in the country, but he doesn't make their top 300. ESPN has Voss as a 4*, ranked as the 15th TE and 278th best player in the country.

Our 3rd top recruit per 247 is Rico Blassingame, WR, who per 247 is a 4* (90) and 51st WR in the country, but doesn't make 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Blassingame as a 3* (88), the 96th WR in the country, but he doesn't make their top 300. ESPN has Blassingame as a 3*, ranked as the 134th WR in the country, and obviously not ranked anywhere near its top 300 players.

The variation gets truly wild with our 4th best recruit per 247, Aaden Aytch, EDGE. 247 has Aytch as a 4* (90), the 35th EDGE in the country, but not among 247's top 300 players. Rivals/On3, remarkably, has Aytch as the highest rated 4* in the nation (97), the 8th ranked EDGE and 33rd(!!) best player in the nation. ESPN has Aytch as a 3*, the 58th Edge in the country and not ranked among its top 300 players.

Skipping five (Andrew Trout) and six (Justin Hopkins), our 7th top recruit per 247 is Ryan Estrada, RB. 247 has him as a 3* (89), ranked the 33rd RB in the country but not among 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Estrada as a 4* (91), the 20th RB and 276th best player in the country. ESPN has Estrada as a 3*, the 23rd RB in the country but not rated in the top 300.

Skipping our 8th rated player, Gavin Meier, OT, our 9th best recruit per 247 is Quayd Hendryx, WR. 247 has him as a 3* (88), ranked the 109th WR in the nation and obviously not among 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Hendryx as a 4* (93), the 32nd WR and 209th best player in the country. ESPN has Hendryx as a 3*, the 141st ranked WR in the country and obviously not a top 300 player (ranked below Blassingame, for instance).

The wild variation among these various ranking services makes it impossible for me to lament the poor quality of any given recruiting class if one looks only to a single rating service (usually 247) to fuel one's lament. It also makes it tough for me to laud a class as the best ever, when there is such a divergence of opinion--best example is Aytch. I think our coaches use the eye test--start with players we can actually get based on their preferences and cost, then select for raw athleticism and "fit" within our system. The national rankings services certainly can reveal the difference between, say, the 3rd best and the 53rd best recruiting classes in the nation. But to think that these ranking systems can distinguish lesser gradations, say between the 25th and the 35th best recruiting classes, is pure folly. Especially when teams are recruiting for "fit" and not just best available athlete.

Having said all this, I believe that the Gophers' 2026 HS class is one of PJ's best. It is a good and deep mix of athleticism and power, with real development potential, yet a good "fit" for the identity he is trying to forge. Go Gophers!
 
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Gophergrandpa said:
There is sometimes anguish on this board over the ratings of players the Gophers recruit and sign. The ratings most of us look to are 247, which offers--at least for me--the simplest access. But 247's simplicity of access does not confer canonical status to its rankings. There are at least three recognized rankings of HS players that are in common use: 247, Rivals/On3 and ESPN. Each of these services produces a top 300 rating for HS classes and rates hundreds more HS players. The ratings variation among these three services can be astounding.

Our top recruit per 247, Howie Johnson, DL, is a "consensus" guy. 247 ranks him as a 4* (94), the 19th DL and 141st best player in the country. Rivals/On3 has him at a 4* (91), the 25th DL and 272nd best player in the country. ESPN has him as a 4* and 250th best player in the country (ESPN uses a different numerical rating--best player in the country is a 93) so I'm not using that number.

Our 2nd top recruit per 247 is Roman Voss, TE, who per 247 is a 4* (91) and 14th TE in the country, but doesn't make 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Voss as a 3* (89), the 33rd TE in the country, but he doesn't make their top 300. ESPN has Voss as a 4*, ranked as the 15th TE and 278th best player in the country.

Our 3rd top recruit per 247 is Rico Blassingame, WR, who per 247 is a 4* (90) and 51st WR in the country, but doesn't make 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Blassingame as a 3* (88), the 96th WR in the country, but he doesn't make their top 300. ESPN has Blassingame as a 3*, ranked as the 134th WR in the country, and obviously not ranked any where near its top 300 players.

The variation gets truly wild with our 4th best recruit per 247, Aaden Aytch, EDGE. 247 has Aytch as a 4* (90), the 35th EDGE in the country, but not among 247's top 300 players. Rivals/On3, remarkably, has Aytch as the highest rated 4* in the nation (97), the 8th ranked EDGE and 33rd(!!) best player in the nation. ESPN has Aytch as a 3*, the 58th Edge in the country and not ranked among its top 300 players.

Skipping five (Andrew Trout) and six (Justin Hopkins), our 7th top recruit per 247 is Ryan Estrada, RB. 247 has him as a 3* (89), ranked the 33rd RB in the country but not among 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Estrada as a 4* (91), the 20th RB and 276th best player in the country. ESPN has Estrada as a 3*, the 23rd RB in the country but not rated in the top 300.

Skipping our 8th rated player, Gavin Meier, OT, our 9th best recruit per 247 is Quayd Hendryx, WR. 247 has him as a 3* (88), ranked the 109th WR in the nation and obviously not among 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Hendryx as a 4* (93), the 32nd WR and 209th best player in the country. ESPN has Hendryx as a 3*, the 141st ranked WR in the country and obviously not a top 300 player (ranked below Blassingame, for instance).

The wild variation among these various ranking services makes it impossible for me to lament the poor quality of any given recruiting class if one look only to a single rating service (usually 247) to fuel one's lament. It also makes it tough for me to laud a class as the best ever, when there is such a divergence of opinion--best example is Aytch. I think our coaches use the eye test--start with players we can actually get based on their preferences and cost, then select for raw athleticism and "fit" within our system. The national rankings services certainly can reveal the difference between, say, the 3rd best and the 53rd best recruiting classes in the nation. But to think that these ranking systems can distinguish lesser gradations, say between the 25th and the 35th best recruiting classes, is pure folly. Especially when teams are recruiting for "fit" not just best available athlete.

Having said all this, I believe that the Gophers' 2026 HS class is one of PJ's best. It is a good and deep mix of athleticism and power, with real development potential, yet a good "fit" for the identity he is trying to forge. Go Gophers!
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I was wondering this when I saw that we have 4 players in the Rivals 300. Thank you for the breakdown, It's like being back in college at the bar on Saturday night....the girl i thought was a 5.5 was an 8 to my buddy...all the time. He became the best wingman a guy could ask for.
 



Gophergrandpa said:
There is sometimes anguish on this board over the ratings of players the Gophers recruit and sign. The ratings most of us look to are 247, which offers--at least for me--the simplest access. But 247's simplicity of access does not confer canonical status to its rankings. There are at least three recognized rankings of HS players that are in common use: 247, Rivals/On3 and ESPN. Each of these services produces a top 300 rating for HS classes and rates hundreds more HS players. The ratings variation among these three services can be astounding.

Our top recruit per 247, Howie Johnson, DL, is a "consensus" guy. 247 ranks him as a 4* (94), the 19th DL and 141st best player in the country. Rivals/On3 has him at a 4* (91), the 25th DL and 272nd best player in the country. ESPN has him as a 4* and 250th best player in the country (ESPN uses a different numerical rating--best player in the country is a 93) so I'm not using that number.

Our 2nd top recruit per 247 is Roman Voss, TE, who per 247 is a 4* (91) and 14th TE in the country, but doesn't make 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Voss as a 3* (89), the 33rd TE in the country, but he doesn't make their top 300. ESPN has Voss as a 4*, ranked as the 15th TE and 278th best player in the country.

Our 3rd top recruit per 247 is Rico Blassingame, WR, who per 247 is a 4* (90) and 51st WR in the country, but doesn't make 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Blassingame as a 3* (88), the 96th WR in the country, but he doesn't make their top 300. ESPN has Blassingame as a 3*, ranked as the 134th WR in the country, and obviously not ranked any where near its top 300 players.

The variation gets truly wild with our 4th best recruit per 247, Aaden Aytch, EDGE. 247 has Aytch as a 4* (90), the 35th EDGE in the country, but not among 247's top 300 players. Rivals/On3, remarkably, has Aytch as the highest rated 4* in the nation (97), the 8th ranked EDGE and 33rd(!!) best player in the nation. ESPN has Aytch as a 3*, the 58th Edge in the country and not ranked among its top 300 players.

Skipping five (Andrew Trout) and six (Justin Hopkins), our 7th top recruit per 247 is Ryan Estrada, RB. 247 has him as a 3* (89), ranked the 33rd RB in the country but not among 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Estrada as a 4* (91), the 20th RB and 276th best player in the country. ESPN has Estrada as a 3*, the 23rd RB in the country but not rated in the top 300.

Skipping our 8th rated player, Gavin Meier, OT, our 9th best recruit per 247 is Quayd Hendryx, WR. 247 has him as a 3* (88), ranked the 109th WR in the nation and obviously not among 247's top 300. Rivals/On3 has Hendryx as a 4* (93), the 32nd WR and 209th best player in the country. ESPN has Hendryx as a 3*, the 141st ranked WR in the country and obviously not a top 300 player (ranked below Blassingame, for instance).

The wild variation among these various ranking services makes it impossible for me to lament the poor quality of any given recruiting class if one look only to a single rating service (usually 247) to fuel one's lament. It also makes it tough for me to laud a class as the best ever, when there is such a divergence of opinion--best example is Aytch. I think our coaches use the eye test--start with players we can actually get based on their preferences and cost, then select for raw athleticism and "fit" within our system. The national rankings services certainly can reveal the difference between, say, the 3rd best and the 53rd best recruiting classes in the nation. But to think that these ranking systems can distinguish lesser gradations, say between the 25th and the 35th best recruiting classes, is pure folly. Especially when teams are recruiting for "fit" not just best available athlete.

Having said all this, I believe that the Gophers' 2026 HS class is one of PJ's best. It is a good and deep mix of athleticism and power, with real development potential, yet a good "fit" for the identity he is trying to forge. Go Gophers!
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Interesting comparison between the various sites and really underscores the amount of guesswork that the services are doing.

It has been crazy to see how much high school recruiting in general has faded into the background. This site used to be dominated by thread after thread arguing about * rankings and their value or lack there of. Now, there are just a few threads about high school recruiting and only a handful really get worked up about the ratings of individual players.

The recruiting sites are really for entertainment purposes only. They give you some insight into the players coming out of high school but beyond that they aren't really worth that much. Especially now when players move around so much and the attrition level in each class is ridiculously high. No point investing much in a guy coming out of high school as a fan until they prove that they can actually play and are going to play for the team you root for.
 

Aytch is a crazy eval. He's either a low-end P4 depth guy his home state flagship (Indiana) didn't offer or he's the greatest recruit in recent Gopher history and shaping up to be a 1st or 2nd round NFL pick.

Problem is that in today's college football if the Gophers are wrong he's playing for Ball State in a couple years and if they are right he's starring for Indiana in a couple years.
 

fmlizard said:
Aytch is a crazy eval. He's either a low-end P4 depth guy his home state flagship (Indiana) didn't offer or he's the greatest recruit in recent Gopher history and shaping up to be a 1st or 2nd round NFL pick.

Problem is that in today's college football if the Gophers are wrong he's playing for Ball State in a couple years and if they are right he's starring for Indiana in a couple years.
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There have only been a handful of players that have left the Gophers for greener pastures. In fact many players that would have significant value in the transfer market have stayed.

Try to refrain from being chicken little.
 





Been a while, but I think they discuss it a bit here. Andrew Trout was a 4 star, but they dropped a star this year because he shut his recruiting down so early.
 






With thousands and thousands of kids, even a .01 difference in ranking can be the difference of a whole bunch of ranks! 94.5 to 94 might not take a star away, but will drop you down the numeral rankings for sure
 

gopherbadgerman said:
Stars and ratings don’t matter. I’ve read that here many times.
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I think stars and rankings matter when the differences are of great magnitude; probably reliable indicators of relative football value. Five stars generally present more immediate football potential than three stars. But three stars are often simply underrated: best Gopher example is Antoine Winfield, Jr., who was ranked a low three star. And the portal demonstrates clearly that some five stars are overrated. The whole system is at best an art not a science. My take? Smaller differences in rankings have about the value of a popcorn fart ... especially when, between the two players, the rating service has no ability whatsoever to gauge the FIT of each player into various schools' schemes.
 

BTChamp said:
Well, it's obvious that the highest ratings are the only ones worth looking at. Regardless of service. Then for each individual rating, the other 2 are dinks.
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In many property value disputes, three appraisals are performed. Party A gets to name his appraiser, party B gets to name her appraiser, and the two selected appraisers pick a third appraiser. The average value of the two appraisals that are closest together is used as the final value. The value in the third "outlier" appraisal is disregarded as being less reliable. This method would, for instance, give EDGE Aytch a rating that lies outside the top 300 players in the nation; the outlier rating at 33rd in the nation would be disregarded as unreliable. Of course, with college football, the only thing that really matters is the actual result, which we won't know for quite a while. Go Aytch!
 


50PoundHead said:
I have no idea how they come up with the rankings, but you're right that the variation is pretty dramatic.
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They have teams of hundreds of analysts reviewing high-school game film and distilling it into data.

They have also hired-away all the best analysts from more profitable industries (banking, investing, manufacturing, agriculture, logistics, oil & gas, retail, politics). All of these top-notch analytical minds would much rather spend their careers perfecting the grading college football prospects. And a share of all those premium subscription fees is on the line!

They also have hundreds of spies that seek to ferret out any irregularities in 40 yard dash, bench max and vertical jump that may be reported to assure the integrity of their proprietary data.

Lastly, they have hundreds more that create empirical data to refine that last fraction of a star. To do this they evaluate the evaluators of the evaluators. It may sound like overkill. But this is the secret to 100%, unassailable accuracy in determining whether a player is a 3.85, or merely a 3.84. The models need to precisely weigh one field analyst’s report on a prospect vs the others.
 

Goldmember said:
They have teams of hundreds of analysts reviewing high-school game film and distilling it into data.

They have also hired-away all the best analysts from more profitable industries (banking, investing, manufacturing, agriculture, logistics, oil & gas, retail, politics). All of these top-notch analytical minds would much rather spend their careers perfecting the grading college football prospects. And a share of all those premium subscription fees is on the line!

They also have hundreds of spies that seek to ferret out any irregularities in 40 yard dash, bench max and vertical jump that may be reported to assure the integrity of their proprietary data.

Lastly, they have hundreds more that create empirical data to refine that last fraction of a star. To do this they evaluate the evaluators of the evaluators. It may sound like overkill. But this is the secret to 100%, unassailable accuracy in determining whether a player is a 3.85, or merely a 3.84. The models need to precisely weigh one field analyst’s report on a prospect vs the others.
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And here I thought the sites were made up of small staffs doing the impossible task of trying to accurately evaluate thousands of recruits playing against all different levels of competition across the country.

But with this new information I may need to rethink my opinion. :)
 

50PoundHead said:
I have no idea how they come up with the rankings, but you're right that the variation is pretty dramatic.
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Per the one person I know who worked at 247, the rankings are basically done per the list of schools that have allegedly given the 'cruit an offer. Fake the offer list, and your ranking goes up. There's been 'cruits that don't even exist (totally fake player) that have made the ranked lists. Once you get to the really high end players, then some effort goes into ranking them, but by far, it's just the list of who's giving them visits and who's making offers.
 

Full Speed Ahead said:
Per the one person I know who worked at 247, the rankings are basically done per the list of schools that have allegedly given the 'cruit an offer. Fake the offer list, and your ranking goes up. There's been 'cruits that don't even exist (totally fake player) that have made the ranked lists. Once you get to the really high end players, then some effort goes into ranking them, but by far, it's just the list of who's giving them visits and who's making offers.
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Which again makes complete sense if you actually think about what the recruiting sites are claiming to do with their rankings.

There is no possible way they can evaluate that many players across the entire country playing against all different levels of competition. They are for entertainment purposes only, it gives fans a way to track the players their team is showing interest in.
 

Full Speed Ahead said:
Per the one person I know who worked at 247, the rankings are basically done per the list of schools that have allegedly given the 'cruit an offer. Fake the offer list, and your ranking goes up. There's been 'cruits that don't even exist (totally fake player) that have made the ranked lists. Once you get to the really high end players, then some effort goes into ranking them, but by far, it's just the list of who's giving them visits and who's making offers.
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I figure once a recruit reaches a certain thesthold (probably 4-stars), more effort goes into the analysis. But watching how players' college careers unfold, it seems that 3-star guys are just all over the place in terms of impact. Of course, when you are looking at 17- and 18-year-olds there is bound to be a range of physical development and potential for more development,
 

50PoundHead said:
I figure once a recruit reaches a certain thesthold (probably 4-stars), more effort goes into the analysis. But watching how players' college careers unfold, it seems that 3-star guys are just all over the place in terms of impact. Of course, when you are looking at 17- and 18-year-olds there is bound to be a range of physical development and potential for more development,
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They can get a little more detailed with guys doing the camp circuit (especially QBs).

The other factor with ratings that people often forget about is that these recruiting sites can only evaluate guys from an on the field standpoint. Late bloomers or injured guys will always be underrated and they also can't factor character and off the field factors into the ratings.

Kid may have elite talent but be a complete douche bag
 

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