Kentucky Wildcats Football: Comparing NFL draft prospects to their star rankings.

The 2012 recruiting class is complete and all college football programs have turned their attention to the 2013 crop of athletes that will hopefully propel their program to the top of the country.  As fans, we comb through databases and websites looking for the next 16, 17, or 18 year old kid that will be our next big thing.  Every athletic quarterback could be the next Randall Cobb.  A big wide receiver could be the next Jacob Tamme.  A promising junior college receiver could be the next Stevie Johnson.

Kentucky fans have grown accustomed to seeing our SEC brethren blow us away in the recruiting rankings year after year and a large portion of the fanbase has grown tired of the program’s ‘inability to land top recruiting classes’ despite Joker and company having just wrapped up the best class in school history.  At the same time, many of Kentucky’s departed seniors are preparing for their shot at making it in the NFL and a couple probably will.

This got me thinking again about the recruiting sites that assign star rankings.  Sitting in my living room, I’m wondering to myself, “I wonder where guys like Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin were ranked coming out of high school?”  So after a couple of hours of research, I came up with some pretty interesting information.  Here’s how I got it.

I’m sure it seems like I’m always picking on Rivals, but I’m not.  I used their online database because recruits are usually judged by their ratings on the rivals.com site when all is said and done.  For this project, I took the top 105 players ranked in the ESPN draft database as assigned by ESPN’s Scouts Inc division (think Todd McShay).  these guys should be the players selected through the first three rounds of the draft.  I matched each player from the NFL draft group up with their ranking out of high school.  Here’s what I found…

1. Overall, Rivals does a pretty fair job of evaluating the top players.  Nearly half (43 out of 105) of the ranked draft prospects were four-star players at one point.

2. The gap between a four-star and a five-star player really isn’t as big as you might think.  Despite the idea that the five-star guys are the “elite of the elite,” there were only 10 of the 105 draft prospects that were five-star players at one time.

3. The gap between a three-star and a four-star player really isn’t that big either.  Actually, the top projected picks at receiver, tight end, guard, inside linebacker, and cornerback are all three-star guys.

4. Defensive players were slightly more accurately projected as high schoolers with 30 of the 54 defensive draft prospects having been four or five star players.  The offensive side had 23 of 51 players rated as four or five star prospects out of high school.

5. Rivals was particularly accurate with running backs, offensive tackles, linebackers and safeties, with all four position groups averaging at lease 3.5 stars per player.

6. Rivals struggled particularly with quarterbacks, tight ends, guards, defensive ends, and cornerbacks, with all five position groups averaging 3.1 stars per player or worse.

7. The Athlete tag gives the database a LOT of leeway when evaluating prospects.  Eight of the 105 draft prospects were listed as Athletes when they were ranked prior to college.

8. Position changes factor into the Lower rated players heavily.  Many of the two and three star guys were moved from offense to defense, vice versa, or added weight and strength and moved closer to the ball.  Giving Rivals some credit, it’s impossible to anticipate a lot of those position changes.

9. Going to a BCS-conference school is still the road to the NFL of the 105 draft prospects, only 16 went to non-BCS schools.  On top of that, two of those guys transferred from SEC programs (Janzen Jackson and Janoris Jenkins) to FCS schools.

10. As much as we hate on the Big East, it really is that bad.  The conference only produced 4 of the top 105 draft prospects this year, the same number as Boise State alone.

So What is the moral to the story?  Don’t take recruiting rankings as the end-all for the future of a program, especially Kentucky’s.  The Class looked pretty good when all was said and done and this data goes to prove that having a five star guy doesn’t mean he’ll even be good enough to be a NFL draft pick in the top three rounds.

The spreadsheets are below for anyone interested.