the star system seems rather arbitrary - who determines how many stars a player is assigned on Rivals or Scout? Who determines, “there should be 29 5-star players (or whatever the number may be in a given year)?” Does that mean that there is a clear drop-off between no.’s 29 and 30?
So, he came up with what could be a more logical way to do this by dividing players into quartiles: the top 25 get five points, the next 25 (26-50) get four points, the next 25 (51-75) get three points, and the last quartile gets two points assigned to them. For rankings that go above 100 (Rivals 250, ESPN 150, Tom Lemming's 225 to watch, etc), those players will receive one point above 100.
In order to effectively eliminate bias, Dr. Romanelli used as many sources as he could find with published rankings: ESPN Top 150, Scout Top 100, Rivals Top 100/250, Lemming's list to watch. This list will also get updated as new rankings come out. Tom Lemming will have a top 100 in July.
In addition, the USA Today will come out with a first-team (approx 25 guys = five points) and a second-team (four points each) All-American groups. The Army All-American team and ESPN All-American team names about 75 players each, and he will assign two points each for that honor. These will be added when they come out during the year. Parade adds an All-American list in January with 58 names - they get two points for this.
At any rate, looking at the "average points per player" tells you how highly each team's recruits are ranked. USC may not have that many commitments (seven ranked players), but look how high the players are ranked; same with Clemson, although they are not expected to sustain that level of recruiting.
For a player to land in the database, they have to be listed on one of the above lists. Only the number of players who are ranked are listed for each team in the rankings.
Please check the homepage regularly for updated rankings.
