RECRUITING SITES - Which one is the favorite?

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Parski1

Parski1

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Parski, I prefer to just follow GopherHole for recruiting updates and information. Seems as accurate as any.
 

Dr.Don said:
Parski, I prefer to just follow GopherHole for recruiting updates and information. Seems as accurate as any.
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I with Doc on this one.

Sent from my PLAYSTATION PHONE using tapatalk
 

Dr.Don said:
Parski, I prefer to just follow GopherHole for recruiting updates and information. Seems as accurate as any.
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I couldn't agree with you more and given the number of experts here and it is still priced at what I feel it is worth.
 

Ok guys - Gopherhole is great......but, it's also ok to get other opinions\ratings. Just sayin. These are the main 3.
 


I like Rivals, and it's got nothing to do with how they rank players. When it's all said and done, all star rankings are just some a-hole's opinion. I personally like the design of the Rivals site and find it's the easiest to use and find information.
 

Breakin' The Plane said:
I like Rivals, and it's got nothing to do with how they rank players. When it's all said and done, all star rankings are just some a-hole's opinion. I personally like the design of the Rivals site and find it's the easiest to use and find information.
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Probably the best assessment of the sites so far. Breakin' The Plane seems to understand that the information is at best somewhat useful. Therefore the ease of use and the number of players being evaluated is what is most important. Rivals does it best.
 

Parski1 said:
For all you Gopherhole recruiting experts...which site do you follow? As expected the recruits STARS change with certain players on each site. I follow ESPN....and looks like Scout does not rank Gopher recruits very high.


ESPN:
http://espn.go.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/school?id=135&action=login

RIVALS:
http://rivals.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/football/recruiting/commitments/2013/minnesota-31

SCOUT :
http://recruiting.scout.com/a.z?s=73&p=9&c=8&toinid=685&yr=2013
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from about 2000-2005, I was locked into "Rivals"

Since then, it has been almost exclusively "Scout" for me. Their accuracy in projecting recruits seems to be best, though not perfect (then again, neither is Nick Saban perfect in his player assessments).

ESPN seems a distant 3rd.
 

Breakin' The Plane said:
I like Rivals, and it's got nothing to do with how they rank players. When it's all said and done, all star rankings are just some a-hole's opinion. I personally like the design of the Rivals site and find it's the easiest to use and find information.
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I definitely agree with the "a-hole" comment! The fact is that none of these sites do any real work. They basically rank kids according to the D-I offers that they get and any hype posted about them on various websites. As a friend of mine that has worked directly with Rivals for 3 years told me "if a kid has a paid subscription, he can increase the number of stars on Rivals". It is just as easy for us to to look at Hudl, Youtube and websites that show who is getting offers as it is for them.
 



Breakin' The Plane said:
I like Rivals, and it's got nothing to do with how they rank players. When it's all said and done, all star rankings are just some a-hole's opinion. I personally like the design of the Rivals site and find it's the easiest to use and find information.
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Same here. Only thing I don't like about Rivals that the other sites have is that ESPN and Scout seem to have a better handle on who is being pursued by a program as well as which programs the recruits are interested in.
 

EliteHSscout said:
I definitely agree with the "a-hole" comment! The fact is that none of these sites do any real work. They basically rank kids according to the D-I offers that they get and any hype posted about them on various websites. As a friend of mine that has worked directly with Rivals for 3 years told me "if a kid has a paid subscription, he can increase the number of stars on Rivals". It is just as easy for us to to look at Hudl, Youtube and websites that show who is getting offers as it is for them.
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Well, I don't know anything about that insider info about kids being able to increase their star ranking with a subscription, but putting all of the information from other websites together with a recruits rankings and other offers IS work.

The fact remains, they are not simply pulling names out of a hat. They are generating a database of guys who have gotten hype other places, evaulating some of the film on youtube and then comparing them with what other coaches have offered. I think it's absurd to expect that they'll go to a every single Junior Day and to thousands of HS games a year.

It's a more sophisticated version of yelp or rotten tomatoes, it's not a conclusive result, but in general, they do a decent job of projecting success. It's been broken down numerous times mathematically that they do a good job of projecting talent (generally). I don't doubt for a second that they base a lot of their info on offers and hype surrounding these kids from other sites. But I don't see how that's a bad thing. Vames has been doing an awesome job with his website and if Rivals is a conglomeration of a bunch of guys like Vames throughout the country, can't be a bad thing.

All of that said, it's just some data about guys that you would otherwise know nothing about. There are obviously guys who slip through the cracks.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Well, I don't know anything about that insider info about kids being able to increase their star ranking with a subscription, but putting all of the information from other websites together with a recruits rankings and other offers IS work.

The fact remains, they are not simply pulling names out of a hat. They are generating a database of guys who have gotten hype other places, evaulating some of the film on youtube and then comparing them with what other coaches have offered. I think it's absurd to expect that they'll go to a every single Junior Day and to thousands of HS games a year.

It's a more sophisticated version of yelp or rotten tomatoes, it's not a conclusive result, but in general, they do a decent job of projecting success. It's been broken down numerous times mathematically that they do a good job of projecting talent (generally). I don't doubt for a second that they base a lot of their info on offers and hype surrounding these kids from other sites. But I don't see how that's a bad thing. Vames has been doing an awesome job with his website and if Rivals is a conglomeration of a bunch of guys like Vames throughout the country, can't be a bad thing.

All of that said, it's just some data about guys that you would otherwise know nothing about. There are obviously guys who slip through the cracks.
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Bob....What is his site? I know he comes on here and gives some nice thorough updates every so often but didn't know he had a site.
 

I like the Rivals database of recruiting classes when trying to quantify things or compare past years, but in terms of using each site to project a player's success it's probably best to compare Rivals, Scout and ESPN, along with what other schools have offered a player, etc.
 



I like Rivals best, but find that they deal poorly with kids that miss their junior season, or have position changes. I like to compare Rivals evaluations to ESPN evaluations. A lot of times ESPN is a little more current and picks changes up that aren't reported on Rivals.
 

24/7 Sports is a newer site that I like quite a bit. It lists offers, interest, provides a timeline of recruiting, a composite ranking of recruits (which I believe is the mean ranking of all recruiting sites together), twitter mentions, and some stats. Here is Rayfield Dixon's profile for example.

http://247sports.com/Player/Rayfield-Dixon-20388
 

pharmacygopher said:
Bob....What is his site? I know he comes on here and gives some nice thorough updates every so often but didn't know he had a site.
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I think if you look back at his posts, you will see he has posted a link to his site.
 




Parski1 said:
I follow ESPN....and looks like Scout does not rank Gopher recruits very high.]
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I think Scout, in general, is a harsher grader than Rivals (I don't know enough about ESPN). It means something if you're a 3-star on Scout, whereas it seems like 3-stars is kind of the default rating on Rivals.
 

247 does a composite score of the star ratings for a particular recruit from Rivals, ESPN, Scout, and 247.
 

RoyalGopher said:
I think Scout, in general, is a harsher grader than Rivals (I don't know enough about ESPN). It means something if you're a 3-star on Scout, whereas it seems like 3-stars is kind of the default rating on Rivals.
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I agree with you, royal.

not nearly as much grade inflation/star inflation on scout as on rivals.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Well, I don't know anything about that insider info about kids being able to increase their star ranking with a subscription, but putting all of the information from other websites together with a recruits rankings and other offers IS work.

The fact remains, they are not simply pulling names out of a hat. They are generating a database of guys who have gotten hype other places, evaulating some of the film on youtube and then comparing them with what other coaches have offered. I think it's absurd to expect that they'll go to a every single Junior Day and to thousands of HS games a year.

It's a more sophisticated version of yelp or rotten tomatoes, it's not a conclusive result, but in general, they do a decent job of projecting success. It's been broken down numerous times mathematically that they do a good job of projecting talent (generally). I don't doubt for a second that they base a lot of their info on offers and hype surrounding these kids from other sites. But I don't see how that's a bad thing. Vames has been doing an awesome job with his website and if Rivals is a conglomeration of a bunch of guys like Vames throughout the country, can't be a bad thing.

All of that said, it's just some data about guys that you would otherwise know nothing about. There are obviously guys who slip through the cracks.
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Don't give these guys too much credit. I worked with Rivals on a project and a friend of mine works with them often. He has told me many times that the "star ratings" are a joke outside of the top 100. Oh, and their "team" (Rivals) is rather small, with only a handful per region who focus on the top recruits, so most of the kids you see as a "2 star" have never been seen on film or in person. As for "work", it doesn't take a rocket scientist to copy and paste a list of recruits from the the top D-I schools, rank them because of those offers and call yourself a expert. Don't get me wrong, I DO believe that they provide good consolidated information in general, but I personally believe that many people take these ratings way to seriously and then feel as though a program failed when they signed a bunch of "2 star" recruits. The fact is that 90 percent of these kids have never been seen by anyone from Rivals or many of the other websites.
 

dinkything said:
I agree with you, royal.

not nearly as much grade inflation/star inflation on scout as on rivals.
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The thing about Scout is they rate prospects for immediate impact and down grade players that need to be developed. At the current state of our program we are signing a lot of development players. Scouts will always penalize us with their grading philosophy.
 


Killjoy said:
Here is the site you are looking for:

http://www.mnfootballhub.com/page/show/464705-2013-recruitment
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Thanks Bob for the plug. As tracking top high school football players is hobby versus a way to earn income, I only provide information to rivals folks (Michael Much, Lucas Trickle, and Ryan Burns) on recruiting interest that our Minnesota preps are picking up. I generally rank juniors by stats, height/weight, and level of play, then when offers start to come in take that into consideration as well. At the end of the day for me, it is about encouraging these youngsters to take care of business in the classroom and dedicate themselves during the offseason to improve their speed, strength, and techniques. If they play more than one sport....great. If not...work hard in the offseason to getter better for the season. I also try to encourage kids to attend Midwest National events if they can attend. I have heard some high school coaches highly discourage this, but at the end of the day you have to go where the recruiters are versus waiting for them to come to some small town Minnesota to watch....unless you are Jonah Pirsig or Tyler Marz. It has also been great to see the number of players head to the Ivy Leagues/Service Academies. We sent eight players last year and so far six players this year. At the end of the day, you can't beat the education from those institutions.

I have been providing updates to Eric Ebert over at MN Football Hub, which is previously linked, then provide updates for Michael Much at the following MinnesotaPreps.com website. http://minnesotapreps.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=921&CID=956917

If anyone has an interest in joining my efforts, let me know. No money involved, but quite a bit of satisfaction knowing I am helping these kids out by getting them some recruiting attention.

Email address is [email protected]

VAmes
 

VAmes - Thanks for your dedication and all your hard work. We are lucky to have people like you and DL65 supporting football in Minnesota each in your own way.:clap:
 

vames said:
Thanks Bob for the plug. As tracking top high school football players is hobby versus a way to earn income, I only provide information to rivals folks (Michael Much, Lucas Trickle, and Ryan Burns) on recruiting interest that our Minnesota preps are picking up. I generally rank juniors by stats, height/weight, and level of play, then when offers start to come in take that into consideration as well. At the end of the day for me, it is about encouraging these youngsters to take care of business in the classroom and dedicate themselves during the offseason to improve their speed, strength, and techniques. If they play more than one sport....great. If not...work hard in the offseason to getter better for the season. I also try to encourage kids to attend Midwest National events if they can attend. I have heard some high school coaches highly discourage this, but at the end of the day you have to go where the recruiters are versus waiting for them to come to some small town Minnesota to watch....unless you are Jonah Pirsig or Tyler Marz. It has also been great to see the number of players head to the Ivy Leagues/Service Academies. We sent eight players last year and so far six players this year. At the end of the day, you can't beat the education from those institutions.

I have been providing updates to Eric Ebert over at MN Football Hub, which is previously linked, then provide updates for Michael Much at the following MinnesotaPreps.com website. http://minnesotapreps.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=921&CID=956917

If anyone has an interest in joining my efforts, let me know. No money involved, but quite a bit of satisfaction knowing I am helping these kids out by getting them some recruiting attention.

Email address is [email protected]

VAmes
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After clicking on the link above, I ran across this article http://www.mnfootballhub.com/news_article/show/217485.
Vames, can you give us some insight on these kids? Thanks!
 

EliteHSscout said:
Don't give these guys too much credit. I worked with Rivals on a project and a friend of mine works with them often. He has told me many times that the "star ratings" are a joke outside of the top 100. Oh, and their "team" (Rivals) is rather small, with only a handful per region who focus on the top recruits, so most of the kids you see as a "2 star" have never been seen on film or in person. As for "work", it doesn't take a rocket scientist to copy and paste a list of recruits from the the top D-I schools, rank them because of those offers and call yourself a expert. Don't get me wrong, I DO believe that they provide good consolidated information in general, but I personally believe that many people take these ratings way to seriously and then feel as though a program failed when they signed a bunch of "2 star" recruits. The fact is that 90 percent of these kids have never been seen by anyone from Rivals or many of the other websites.
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That's fine if you and your friend work there, I'm not suggesting that you don't.

The fact remains that there is empirical evidence to suggest they do a decent job of evaluating prospects. If those evaluations are the product of just regurgitating other people's info, so be it. At the end of the day, it'll give someone who doesn't know much about those prospects a good idea of how the players are viewed by college coaches and scouts.

I can't speculate how their evaluations are formed, you have your opinions and I've heard them before from other people. So be it, at the end of the day, they are still mathematically a decent indicator of success.

- They aren't conclusive.
- Players slip through the cracks.
- More goes into it (academic, fit to the team, etc.)

But it would be like reading a mock draft online from a guy who does nothing but study other people's mock drafts. I gurantee you that he'll be a better predictor than someone who simply watches college football and guesses at the end of the day.

Rivals is for lay people, to get a general idea. It's mathematically effective at that. I'm not giving them any more credit than that.
 


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