All, take a look at the current recruiting class rankings and it is amazing how many of the top ten schools in recruiting classes for 2011 Auburn played in 2010 and will play in the near future. Here are where Auburn's 2010 and 2011 opponents are ranked by Rivals and ESPNU - note how different the rankings are between both!
It's no wonder that the SEC has produced 5 straight BCS champs. The talent level in the league is insane.
Also...the ratings of these two will always look pretty different because of how they rate them. Rivals does the points thing, so someone like Ole Miss, who already has 28 commitments, has accumulated a lot of "points" in the Rivals system. But ESPNU doesn't care so much about that. They look at overall quality, along with quantity, and also the number of impact players.
The best example of those differences is to see where they both have Ole Miss (28 commits) ranked and where they both have Florida (15 commits) ranked.
ESPN cares more that of Florida's 15 kids, 6 of them are ESPN150 and 10 are 4-star or higher. They don't really care that Ole Miss has 28 commitments since only 1 is an ESPN150 guy.
But Rivals' way of doing it makes sense too. When you bring in a lot of guys, you do increase your odds of finding special players. Let's say 25% of the 4-star players become difference makers. Well if you bring in six 4-star guys, you might have 1 or 2 difference makers. If you bring in fourteen 4-star guys, you might have 3 or 4 difference makers. 3 difference makers on defense is a lot better than 1 difference maker. That is usually the difference in Ole Miss and Florida.
So both methods have credibility I think, which is why it's always a good idea to take into account everyone's ratings.
This post has been edited 2 times, most recently by jadennis on 1/27/2011 at 1:50 PM
No, as of now Westerman is our only ESPN 5 star. Their ranking has us up through Westerman at number 9. With the three recent additions we will rise even further.
Auburn and competition recruiting rankings at ESPNU and Rivals