I ran across this recruiting tidbit today.
"Alabama’s blue-chip percentages are still slightly higher — 77 percent for previous four years, and 96 percent so far for 2019 — but UGA’s not far behind and its gap over most of the rest of the country is growing rapidly.
Talent doesn’t just matter in pursuit of national championships though, it can be a crucial edge each Saturday as well.
The college football writer, Matt Hinton did a study in 2013 regarding how predictive star rankings were in determining which teams would win and lose games. The results were in his words, “overwhelming.”
Examining games played over a three-year span — a total of 1,028 games — Hinton found the team with the higher-rated recruits “won almost exactly two-thirds of the time (66.4 percent of the time, to be exact.)”
IMO, this is underwhelming. When you add in the fact that players that are being recruited by the "better" programs are going to be more highly rated just by that fact, it just another log on the fire telling me that the evaluations of any particular player are very imprecise.
What I AM NOT SAYING is that talent does not matter - it surely does. It is probably the greatest factor in the success of a player and even a team of players.
What I AM NOT SAYING is that player ratings/evaluations do not matter - they do have value. Though they are not nearly as important as actual talent as well as intangibles and coaching, the "evaluators" have some ability, but they are greatly influenced by which programs are recruiting a player which may or may not have meaning in any particular case. But in aggregate the ratings usually matter.
But ratings are also somewhat self-fulfilling. Bama is going to get the benefit of the doubt if they are recruiting a player because of CNS' evaluation skill and Bama's proven success. OSU will get the same but only because of proven success. UGA will get the same but because they are sitting on a pile of talent. And so on...