Oddly, enough, I don’t think it’s true. For instance, it was reported that when Randy Shannon was football HC at Miami, his assistants were using Rivals’ stars as a basis for making offers. I cannot remember the exact source, but it was mainstream media which reported it. Of course, it was being cited in an article about Shannon’s dismissal. Also, in an interview this year, the HC at Colorado State admitted that he offered David Roddy over the phone without ever seeing him play, or even meeting him. At least, I think it was Roddy and CSU. I suspect that there are a lot of schools with very small recruiting budgets, and the coaches have to rely on reports from sources they consider reliable. Sometimes, we at Virginia forget how fortunate we are.
Football “stars” directly correlate to success on the field so it’s not that bad of a strategy. The top 5-10 classes every year are the best teams on the field for the most part
Roddy had a connection to an assistant at Colorado St. So even if the head coach hadn’t seen him play, I’m sure they had some pretty good info on him.
Which is sort of my point. Some head coaches don’t have the luxury of evaluating talent personally. They have to rely on other sources. It’s a higher risk.
Yeah, but I don’t think that means they blindly take the 247 composite and recruit based on those rankings alone. I surmise that they take that or some other list, read scouting reports from those or other sites or consultants or other contacts and then put together their own internal ranking of players based on program fit. And no 2 coaches should have the same list order as each other or a recruiting service.
If a guy’s not even doing that, I don’t know what he thinks he’s getting paid to do outside of games and practices.