Why CU Buff Football Fans Should FORGET About the Recruiting Services

There are more than EIGHT months to go before the 2014 National Signing Day for college football, yet many CU Buff football fans are worried about coach MacIntyre's next recruiting class and how it is ranked by the well known recruiting services Scout.com and Rivals.com. These fans should really STOP giving so much credence to these and other recruiting services.

WHY should fans take what the services say with a grain of salt?

• Rivals and Scout each use a network of about 300 "sources" to come up with their ratings of players.
• According to USA Football, there are roughly 1.134 MILLION high school football players at 15,513 high schools across the US.
• That would mean each "source" used by these recruiting services would be responsible for well over 50 high schools, which would not be an easy task.
• If that were not daunting enough, according to the Digest of Education Statistics there are actually over 37,000 public and private high schools in the US. This is well more than double the number listed by USA football.
• This would raise the number of schools to be watched over by each "source" to about 120, a much harder task.
• Many of the "sources" used by recruiting services are unpaid fans of local football. Most of them depend on simple calculations like height, weight, and 40 yard dash times to determine the number of "stars" a recruit will get from them.
• Most never have access to whether potential recruits have the grades or test scores that indicate probable success as a STUDENT at the college level.
• They are not trained or paid (in most cases) to evaluate growth and strength capabilities of rapidly growing young men.
• Some so-called recruiting services can be persuaded to UP their evaluations if the price is right. Basically, this means the are being paid to promote athletes.

Compare this if you will with college football coaching PROFESSIONALS.

• These men are paid handsomely to build relationships with high school coaches and prospective recruits.
• They have to get inside the heads of their recruits. They meet their families and learn about how dedicated to schoolwork the young men are.
• Meeting the parents and siblings (especially older ones) allows these men to ascertain how much the recruit is likely to grow, and how much family support is there for the University of Colorado.
• The coaches also have to evaluate prospective players psychologically. They have to determine if they are dedicated TEAM players, or if they are a potential prima donna who will be disruptive to the team.
• Sadly, they also have to determine if the prospective student is likely to have "legal problems" or thrive in an environment which might be VERY different than they are used to. 
• These men take these responsibilities very seriously because their jobs and career depend upon it.

Recruiting is an inexact science at best. If the recruiting services were right then USC would be handed the National Championship trophy just about every year. What is much more important than star ratings of recruits is coaching, Coaches are trained and paid to know and evaluate young men.

If a coach from a FBS school offers a scholarship to a young man who is unrated or a two-star recruit according to the recruiting services, what it usually means is that the coaches know a lot more about the recruit than the "services" do. We should let them do the jobs they are PAID to do.

A case in point here is the young man named Connor Center who recently signed on to play for the Buffs. He is an excellent athlete who played another sport in high school. So what? His numbers (6' 8" tall, 250 lbs., and 4.68 in the 40 yard dash) would have made him a top ten recruit at tight end. Even though he never played high school football, many schools offered him a scholarship based solely on a workout video he sent out this spring. But CU coaches liked what they saw and sent a coach across the country to work him out in person. A visit to Boulder later, and the Buffs now have one of the biggest coups of the 2013 recruiting class. As the old saying goes, you can't teach height or speed.

Another example is David Bakhtiari, who left school early and was drafted recently into the NFL. Coming out of high school, David was listed by the recruiting services as a TWO star recruit.

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On another note, USC was in the news recently for offering a scholarship to an 8th grade kid who hasn't even gotten to high school yet. Brave move by a coach that many Trojan fans want gone. The one way to nip this idiotic trend in the bud is to make schools live up to that offer no matter what happens to the kid in the next four years. Is the offer still good if the young man blows out his knees or gets multiple concussions? No coach is bound to honor scholarship offers, especially those made by prior coaches. Even the ones they offer themselves can be rescinded at any time. And recruits can also change their minds at any time. Nothing is set in stone until the Letter of Intent is signed, sealed and delivered.