I'm not Paul. I can and did use it. I always love it when someone tells me what I can't do! He has a valid point concerning how a service rates one player as the #21 guard prospect and there is no way of knowing the difference from #35 . Always love his thoughts on the experts that have never coached and if they were good they would have their on team. Not very sure you are very good at this evaluation game either.
Well, I'm not going to get into the CPJ good or bad pissing match. I've made my opinions on that clear before and I'm not sure anything I say will change anyone's mind so I'll hold that part in.
But I will weigh in on the "recruiting rankings" argument. In that case, I disagree with the statement above.
If you don't think recruiting rankings matter, I would offer Ole Miss as example of what highly ranked recruiting classes will do for your program. A program that has been miserable since Christ wore short pants is now one that has been a big part of the new playoff discussion for many weeks. Do you think that it's a coincidence that this happens after they pulled in a #1 and a #7 ranked recruiting class over the past 2 years?
Yes, the recruits are often graded by people like Kelly Quinlan and Jamie Newburgh who may have never played football. But there are also scouts and people on staff who have played and have played at very high levels. Also, learning to evaluate talent is a skill set that is most definitely learned and just having played the game does not ensure that you are any better at it than one who has not played the game.
Do the rankings miss on some players? Absolutely. Some they rank too high; many they rank too low. But remember that football doesn't have the advantages of baseball & basketball. Elite baseball players who play for small, private schools against potentially poor HS competition will usually also play on travel ball teams where they'll match up against players from the largest and/or best programs in the country. So college coaches get to see how they match up. The same happens for basketball with AAU. But with football, there's more uncertainty.
I remember reading that many college coaches weren't sure how good Herschel Walker would be when he got to college because he had played against Georgia single A high schools...where there weren't a ton of great players. A few were even famously quoted as saying, "Let's see how good he is when he can't just run over people like he does in high school". (Remember those were college coaches saying that...people who had "played the game".)
Finally, I'll add that top ranked recruiting classes don't guarantee success as a program. You still need good coaching, buy in from the players, hard work and a good bit of luck. But, do I think recruiting rankings matter? Yes, I do. And FWIW, Paul does too in private; although I'm fairly sure you won't hear him say that in public.
