Don’t bank on recruitment rankings, they’re meaningless
Don’t @ me
With a season in pure turmoil, fans are livid. The snowball started off small during the middle of last season.
Our team ends the 2016 season with a five-game win streak and an Orange Bowl victory against a Michigan team who was potentially snubbed from a College Playoff spot; Derwin James coming back for the 2017 season; our star freshman quarterback had a tremendous season and was touted as a dark horse candidate for the Heisman trophy after the season was over; The Noles recruiting class was ranked number three in the nation and 17 of our 22 starters were returning from the 2016 season; no crazy hurdles or injuries during the summer and fall camp.
Then, September 2nd happened. That giant snowball evaporated before it could make an impact.
The media planted a seed in our fans’ heads and that seed grew and developed, feeding off nothing but poison: recruiting rankings.
Every player on our team was ranked at the national level when they were being recruited. In fact, during this last game against Boston College, 9 five-stars and 24 four-stars saw the field. Considering a 5-star is the highest you can be ranked, some would think this team would be unstoppable based off those numbers. Little do most realize, rankings are nothing but a plaque awarded to a player by a handful of analysts.
Fans lean on these ranking so much, that they’re blind to the human element of the player. They yell at coaches expecting players to be as tremendous as their rankings foreshadowed them to be. What fans don’t see is the other 97% of the athlete’s life that is far more important in predicting the success of the player. Their study habits, their social life, their drive, their personality, their history. Those are just a couple of categories fans often don’t factor in to the player’s success in and off the field.
Everyone now-a-days thinks they can coach, or that they know how to handle a situation better than the actual coach. “Why’d they call that blitz?!” “Let’s open up our offense a little more!" “Why aren’t our talented freshman getting more reps?!”
The truth is, fans don’t know anything. Fans haven’t studied an extensive amount of film like our coaches have, fans haven’t bonded with these talented athletes on a personal level like the coaches have and some fans don’t even know what these players look like. There’s an old saying, “The wiser you get, the less you speak.”
Don’t bank on the rank, leave it to the professionals.