Why I Use Rivals.com Over Other Services for Recruiting Comparisons

Justin Herbert was a Rivals.com 3-Star with offers only from Montana State, Northern Arizona and Portland State…other than Oregon?

So many people ask why I do not refer to the CBS 247, or ESPN, or On3 Recruiting Analyses and Rankings and use the Rivals.com rankings instead? It is because I often am looking at a longer time perspective, as I compare the current year to previous ones–frequently going back 10 to 20 years. I want consistency in the rankings of players being a 3-Star or 4-Star and for many years, the rankings of 247 were suspect.

Originally, the other major site reporting on recruiting was Scout.com and that nationwide franchise was owned by a Husky. The result was that often you would see a player go from a 3-Star ranking to a 4-Star when he verballed to Washington, while 4-Star recruits verballing to Oregon would suddenly and mysteriously “lose” a star. It happened so often that we quit complaining about it because it was so routine. Thus, I could not longer trust the rankings of Scout.com at that time, and solely relied on the consistency of Rivals.com.

Then Scout.com was sold to CBS 247 and all the old rankings, (the tainted ones) were now part of their long-term database of player rankings at 247. Thus I cannot make accurate comparisons to the past when using the corrupted rankings of 247, and the other rating services have no long-term history to them.

There is also a consistency built into Rivals, where they grade you on your top 20 recruits, no matter how many you have.  If you have below 20 recruits, then you will be downgraded as you are at other rating services. But the other rating services give more points for more recruits; only Rivals compares the best-to-the-best between schools. It is a grade based on quality of recruit, not the quantity.

Over time, I’ve also come to respect how it is often more difficult to get that fourth or fifth star at Rivals, as it is typical for a player to be a 4-Star on another service, while a 3-Star on Rivals. The grading is tougher, and when a player gets moved up from 3-Star to 4-Star, it is based on merit, and not which school he is projected to attend.

I am not a member of the Rivals sites, nor do I receive anything for this endorsement. I simply want tough grading with ongoing consistency, and thus why you will see that I use the Rivals.com player rankings in my articles.