Do you follow college football recruiting?

Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t, but if you like college football at all, you should know this:

Recruiting makes its world go round.

The teams that rank high in recruiting win, and win often.

And you rank high in recruiting by collecting high school players that are ranked high with the same fervor that 90’s children collected Nirvana albums. (Simple, isn’t it?)

High school recruits are rated (from outside talent evaluators) on a star scale, 1-5 (low value to high value). 1 being a Ponderosa steak (low quality and cheap) , and 5 being a Peter Luger steak (high quality, only 2% of steak cuts are good enough to serve here).

Now, it is not an exact science, and some programs win with players on the lower end of the scale (TCU, Boise State). But, if you follow your team’s recruiting, there is usually a feeling of joy if your school gets a commitment from a 5-star-type player (the thought being a great high school player will turn into a great college player), and a feeling of confusion if your school gets a commitment from a 3-star-type player or lower (the thought being that he wasn’t one of the best high school players, but there is a chance he might develop into a good college player).

Brian Kelly, Notre Dame’s newest savior, doesn’t care about the star rankings. He will recruit who he thinks can help the program, not who others think can help the program, thank you very much.

I, on the other hand, have always felt more comfortable with getting a high number of the really highly regarded recruits (potential more likely to pan out). It is just playing the odds (Would you shoot 10 low risk, easier to make free throws for $50 a piece, or would you go for the harder to make, higher risk full court shot for a $1,000 pay out?).

College football writer (and heavy recruiting follower) Bruce Feldman takes my thoughts, and places them in a carefully padded package labeled fragile, puts the box in the middle of the street, and proceeds to run back and forth over the box until it is nothing but dust particles. His latest post shows that there are actually many 3-star-type players on just one NFL team, and not only that, but that they are also playing in the Super Bowl (quite a few Colts, indeed).

My first thought (a completely new thought, as all my old ones are dust on Main Street) is, “Wow, maybe I was wrong all along, and I should be fine with Brian Kelly recruiting anyone, no matter their star value.”

But, my second thought is, “Well, it’s true that the Colts are in the Super Bowl, but they would probably be a 5 win team without Peyton Manning (a 10-star recruit on the 5-star scale).”

Which thought should it be?