It's an odds game. There is no doubt that many 5-stars flame out or don't even step on a D-1 field after high school. And there are scores of low-ranked prep players who go on to college and/or pro greatness. But, on average, the best D-1 football programs are built by recruiting and signing and developing and playing high school players who are considered the best at their positions by evaluators/rankers/other coaches/etc. THE first job of a D-1 coach is to get the best talent he can get. All of this "well, we don't get the best talent, but we develop them into better players" is for non-top-tier programs. I guess a more direct question would be: "As a D-1 head coach, which of the following recruiting classes would you rather have --- regardless of position needs?": 5 - 5-star 10 - 4-star 10 - 3-star or 0 - 5-star 5 - 4-star 10 - 3-star 5 - 2-star 5 - no-star Pretty obvious to most folks. You want the best as your lump of clay to mold from. Unless you're a masochist or have some "me against the world, boy, I'll show them" chip on your shoulder. Charlie has gone all James Tiberius Kirk on us with a very large carbon footprint of State of Texas jet contrails in the past week --- why? Because he's content with 2 and 3 stars and "we'll show everybody how we can coach 'em up?" No. He's trying to get the best players he can. And those best players, not coincidentally have the highest "star" ratings. This gets discussed seemingly every year, but the 5 most recent years Rivals top-10 were (those that could have contributed to 2014 season, including red-shirting): The Link 2010 1 USC 2 Florida 3 Texas 4 Auburn 5 Alabama 6 LSU 7 OU 8 UCLA 9 Tennessee 10 Florida State 2011 1 Alabama 2 Florida State 3 Texas 4 USC 5 Georgia 6 LSU 7 Auburn 8 Clemson 9 Oregon 10 Notre Dame 2012 1 Alabama 2 Texas 3 Florida 4 Ohio State 5 Stanford 6 Florida State 7 Michigan 8 USC 9 Miami Fl 10 Auburn 2013 1 Alabama 2 Ohio State 3 Notre Dame 4 Florida 5 Michigan 6 LSU 7 Mississippi 8 UCLA 9 Auburn 10 Florida State 2014 1 Alabama 2 LSU 3 Ohio State 4 Florida State 5 Tennessee 6 Texas A&M 7 Georgia 8 Florida 9 Auburn 10 USC Uh, I think I see an association with the Final Four: Alabama, Florida State, Oregon, and Ohio State. Certainly Oregon is the exception, with only 1 top-10 recruiting class in that time frame. But the group for the past 5 years?: Team (2010,2011,2012,2013,2014) Ohio State (x,x,4,4,3) Florida State (10,2,6,10,4) Alabama (5,1,1,1,1) Oregon (x,9,x,x,x) I guess one could argue that Oregon does more with less, but I don't think one could rationally argue that Alabama does less with more. And Ohio State and Florida State are really no surprise --- they are also getting the best of the best to play for them. Duh. Texas for the past 5 years?: Texas (3,3,2,x,x) --- that with a few critical injuries and dismissals, and should be no surprise where Texas is right now. The future? As of now, with the class still not complete, 2015 1 Alabama 2 USC 3 Clemson 4 Florida State 5 Tennessee 6 Georgia 7 Ohio State 8 Texas 9 Notre Dame 10 Texas A&M ... so maybe Texas is rejoining the top-10 recruiting level. It will, of course, take more than one year, and this first year of return won't immediately return Texas to the NC conversation. But it's a start.
The goal of Texas Longhorn football is to win a college football national title, not a super bowl or draft day. Teams that win national titles do it with 4 and 5 star players. See 2014 Ohio State, 2013 Florida State, 2012 Alabama, etc. That being said we have a pretty fantastic "national title worthy" defensive class if we hold on to what we have. It is not signing day yet and I am hopeful that Strong and his staff can pick up some offensive suprises before then.
The recruiting services star ratings are a starting point, but I'm guessing the good programs have their own evaluation of players that sometimes, but not always, will coincide with the recruitniks. Remember the Acho brothers? They were three star players, but both Texas and USC offered when the programs were at the height of their recruiting prowess and could have had their choice of 4 star DEs and LBs. The Acho brothers were still in the NFL last I looked.
And that kind of supports the general point: A national title contending program almost always is built on more that just a couple of players that are later bloomers. It's staffed 2 and 3 deep with 4 and 5 star players, not late bloomers and projects. Those are nice, but who rationally would insist upon putting more effort into late bloomers and projects at the expense of pursuing consensus 4 and 5 star right-now players? Good on the Achos and Colt, etc. The last Texas national championship was loaded with those famous "Coach February" Mack Brown recruits that had Texas regularly in top-5 recruiting rankings. As was the USC roster. Size matters. Chicks dig the long ball. Recruiting is important.
Character plays a huge roll too. Ryan Perrilloux was the number 1 QB in the country, and we all know how that worked out.
Character was often discussed with Miami (Florida) when they won 5 national titles between 1983-2001.
A 6A High School head coach once told me, "You need one thug in the locker room to win a championship."
Teams either care or don't care about recruiting rankings depending where they are getting the majority of their recruits.
