The Bodda Getta

Colin Kaepernick was the 34th rated QB in his HS class, and a mere 3 star......but he did score 1650 on his SAT....

Everybody, OK MOST people, love a feel-good, underdog story and that's what these are. Surprises. Nobody is surprised, or too excited, when somebody who was supposed to be great turns out to be great. At least that's what I think.
I could say that there goes Poster X (aka McBigun) being all negative about something AGAIN. How UN-interesting.

I don't think there is any question that a lot of the quarterbacks that end up being great in college or the NFL were once rated 2-star or 3-star talents. You just gave two great examples...and there are a ton more.

But the reason the star-ratings aren't irrelevant, is that they give you a pretty good idea on the odds of which player is likely to become one of the notable, successful college talents. It's the odds that are important.

I took about 10-15 minutes to go through 2003 to 2007 and compare the 3-star and 4/5-star quarterbacks of each year. There are TONS of good 3-star quarterbacks to be found in those years o recruiting.

Here are some 3-star examples of solid-to-great players...
Aaron Rodgers
Matt Ryan
Chase Daniel
Colt McCoy
Ricky Stanzi
Sam Bradford
Andy Dalton
John Parker Wilson
Colin Kaepernick
Ryan Tannehill
Kellen Moore
Kirk Cousins
Taylor Potts
Greg McElroy
Christian Ponder
Nick Foles
Chris Todd
Matt Grothe

And there are also TONS of examples of 4 and 5-star QBs from that time period. Here are a few....
Dennis Dixon
Andre Woodson
Matt Flynn
Brady Quinn
Stephen McGee
Zac Lee
Jimmy Clausen
Mark Sanchez
Sam Keller
Jamarcus Russell
Brian Brohm
Sean Glennon
Erik Ainge
Drew Tate
Chad Henne
Graham Harrell
Chris Leak
Jake Locker
Josh Freeman
Matthew Stafford
Tim Tebow
Tyrod Taylor
Cam
Ryan Mallett

But here is the thing. While there are lots of notable names found in the 3-star rankings, there are a significant number of "never heard of him" names too. And while there are certainly "never heard of him" names found in the 4 and 5-star ranks as well, the ratios are considerably different.

The following isn't scientific, because it was just me going through the ratings and writing down the guys names that I knew to have been an impact player in college to some degree.

Here are the rough numbers.

Total 3-star QBs, 2003-2007 - 289
Notable 3-star QBs, 2003-07 - 26
Percentage - 9%

Total 4/5-star QBs, 2003-2007 - 93
Notable 4/5-star QBs, 2003-07 - 44
Percentage - 47%

So yeah, there were 26 guys, some names as big as Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy. But it took 289 players to find those 26. A 9% chance of getting a notable player are not great odds.

On the other hand, of the 93 4/5-star players, you had pretty close to a 50/50 chance of getting a notable player. Those are some pretty good odds.

And that's why the ratings do actually mean something. It's not about determining that each and every 3-star or 5-star player is guaranteed to turn out a particular way. It's about recognizing the odds of success given their evaluation.

If you have the choice, you are far better off taking a roster with four 4-star quarterbacks than a roster with four 3-star quarterbacks.

Your other point is still very true though too....we have to hope the staff is good at predicting which of the 3-star and 4-star guys are going to be the stand-outs, and which are likely to bust.

PS. I didn't bother going through the 2-star quarterbacks....there were 703 of them.

From 2003 - 2008 there were 28 QBs rated 5 star. Only 13 made it to the NFL, only 8 of those started more than 1 or 2 games, and only 1 became a Pro Bowl quality player in Michael Vick. Lesson - dont be overjoyed by a 5 star QB commit. Here's the numbers for other positions:

OL - 25, 10, 3, 0
DT - 14, 9, 5, 2 (Marvin Austin maybe, Gerald McCoy)
DE - 18, 12, 5, 0
LB - 19, 10, 3, 0
RB - 29, 13, 5, 3 (McFadden, Bush, Petersen)
WR - 30, 20, 6, 4 (Desean Jackson, Calvin Johnson, Percy Harvin, Julio Jones)
DB - 27, 17, 7, 4(Ted Ginn maybe, Patrick Peterson probably, Eric Berry probably, Antonio Cromartie)

I did not consider the few ATH ranked players for simplicity. Pay closest attention on the 3rd number - those players that actually started consistently in the NFL - that's a very low number considering these were the "cream of the crop athletes". Go back thru those lists if you want a bunch of chuckles.

Bottom line is if 5 stars are going to be weighted so heavily in recruiting rankings these "analysts" need to improve their abilities about two-fold. That's why I don't get squirreled up about rankings. The numbers have a good deal of inaccuracy in them. If they ditched 5-star and stuck with 4 or less they would be much more valuable. I'll worry about a recruiting class when more than 50% are rated 3-star and lower and about the only 5-star I will get overly excited about is a DT since those pan out at a high %

The point is the 5-star rating is inaccurate at best and very biased. It should be like catching fish in a bathtub. The %s match 4-star numbers so why give more credence to 5-stars?