There is 100% truth in the belief that stars matter. Are they the final say in who will be good and who won't? Of course not. But the statistics show that by far and away, the star ratings matter. For instance:
- 37% of all blue-chip recruits play in the SEC. The next highest conference, the Pac-12, has 22% of all blue-chip recruits. The other 3 Power 5 conferences don't even get 20% (it has absolutely nothing to do with there being any difference whatsoever in recruits from the North vs recruits from the South, let alone a "vast difference"; SEC teams just have more blue-chip recruits, and if players from the South were really that much better then the Big 10 wouldn't have gone 7-1 in bowl games and the SEC wouldn't have gone 4-5 in bowl games)
- The SEC is the conference with the most draft picks in the last five years, as well as the most national championships in the last 10 years, mostly due to their talent disparity
- Blue-chip recruits are almost 1,000% more likely to be drafted in the first round of the NFL draft
- 5-star recruits are about 33 times more likely to be All-Americans than 2-star recruits are
- Power 5 teams (of which there are 65) that consistently recruit Top 20 classes have a 60% chance of becoming a Top 20 program and a 35% chance of regularly inhabiting the Top 10
- By contrast, Power 5 teams that finish outside the Top 20 in recruiting have a lower than 18% chance of fielding Top 20 teams and just a 6.7% chance of even reaching the Top 10
- If we were to place a 50% threshold for blue-chips on a college roster, then only 13 teams have enough talent to win a national championship: Alabama, USC, Ohio State, LSU, Notre Dame, Florida State, Michigan, Auburn, UCLA, Texas A&M, Georgia, Clemson, and Texas
- Of the list above, 13 of the last 15 national championships (choosing 15 because that's about the start of the ratings era) were won by one of these schools (the other 2 years being Florida, when they did meet the 50% threshold, so technically, 15 of the last 15 national championships were won by teams that have at least 50% of their roster being blue-chip recruits)
Obviously, there are exceptions, just like in everything. However, statistic after statistic supports the fact that stars and ratings do in fact matter. It's remarkably simple, really: the most talented teams will win more games than the lesser talented teams. What Coach Paul Johnson has a problem with is not that stars don't matter (even he would admit that they do); what he says is he doesn't believe you can really differentiate, for example, between the number 12 and number 14 offensive tackle in the country. That's where his qualms come into play. But even he would say you absolutely can differentiate between the number 5 and number 30 offensive tackle in the country. To say stars don't matter is simply burying your head in the sand and refusing to listen to facts. By every metric they do matter, whether you like it or not