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Most of us are comfortable with the nature of a "5-star player" in basketball, and the line of demarcation between 5-star and 4-star players seems legitimate at 25-30 or so. The remaining top 100 players are generally 4-star players. That's usually as far as a Kentucky goes, or most elite schools.
But in football it is different. You go about 25-39 deep in "5-star players," per Scout and Rivals, or roughly the same as basketball, despite having many, many more players.
Is that enough? Is there really a demarcation between # 39 and # 40 in football, where schools sign 25 players a year instead of 4? There are so many more football players than basketball players, I'm not sure that's a legitimate dividing line. If a 5-star player is defined as a true "game-changer," and there are really only 25-39 of them in the country, maybe we can live with it, although it seems to fly in the face of logic.
On Scout, from # 40 to # 300, they're all "4-star" recruits. That's probably fine, but indicative of just how many players are out there. But the question remains--are the # 40 player and the # 300 player really the same talent level? Really?
Scout's database doesn't rank the players after # 300, but there will be another 400-500 that are "3-star" players, if they are similar to Rivals, discussed below.
On Rivals, the 5-star player is even more rare, according to their explanation -- only the top 25-30 in the country. Again, for 4-star, there is a huge category of "top 250-300." Is # 26 (possibly a 4* player) the same as # 300? They are under this classification.
3-star players under Rivals means you are a top 750 player, so the next 450 to 500 players get that classification.
There are a lot of players in football. The categories have to be big if you are classifying them as a 5*, 4*, 3* or 2* (no 1* are classified).
My proposal is this. Expand the classifications. Go from a "5-star" classification system to a true "7-star" classification system. Today, you have only 4 classes that thousands of football players are shoehorned in (no 1*, remember).
7-star player -- a true game-changer. Whatever the number is. There are 120ish D1 programs in the country. Let's say that only the top 20% of them get a player, which puts that number at 24. Let's say that the upper echelon 10% of them get 2 of them, so that adds 12 more. Then let's say the elite 5% get 4 of them, so that adds 24 more. That's 56 total, and let's deduct 6 to make a round number and account for errors. 7-star player is the top 50 in the nation. Some schools will have more in that top 20%, others will have none. Fifty of them just sounds right.
6-star player -- an elite player, likely All-American team type of some sort eventually. Go with # 51-100.
5-star player -- all-conference type player during his career. # 101-200. Starting to expand.
4-star player -- starter at major conference level, multiple years. # 201-400. (Ballparking these numbers, but probably could put pencil to paper and get even better ones.)
3-star player -- contributor at major conference level, starter at some point. # 401-600.
2-star player -- mid-major player, or borderline high level reserve. # 601-750.
1-star player -- non D1 talent to reserve mid-major. #751-1500.
0-star player -- not rated. If there are 120 D1 schools signing an average of 20 players per year, that means that there ought to be about 2400 players "rated." I'd guess 1500 or so actually are rated, so that's the number I'm using above.
Even moreso than basketball, "rating" players at levels is useful in comparing individual recruits to another. But this expanded 7-star classification system would allow better comparisons on an individual level, yet avoid micro-analyzing individual players with number rankings. Let's improve the "star system" for ranking players. It is a good system, correlative of success on the field--but can it be better? By expanding the classifications, it has a chance.
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