24/7 Sports

[shortynd01]

Apparently they even had an evaluation write-up... I would have loved to have seen it lol

Article about it:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaafb/a-fake-football-recruit-successfully-catfished-their-way-to-a-3-star-ranking/ar-BBTC6W6?ocid=spartandhp

 

[IrishLax]

The bottom line is that it's impossible to rank thousands of kids accurately and realistically they shouldn't even be trying. There was a USC coach a decade ago who said the difference between a 3-star and a 4-star was one phone call from him... and not much has changed since then. The biggest change, if anything, is that they now over-emphasize camps which is worse than going off biased coach recommendations.

There are lots of examples of rankings defying logic. One of my favorites was that "5 star" (per Rivals) RB from Richmond area years ago who I think ended up at Michigan after he wasn't a take at Virginia Tech. That was puzzling... that Tech would pass on a local 5-star... so you do a little bit of asking local HS coaches and people involved and the responses come back "Dude, that kid cannot play. I have no idea why he's rated that way." Sure enough, total bust in college. For a Notre Dame example, Jamel James was never a legit P5 prospect. He went from completely off the radar to "low 4 star" simply because he "committed" to Notre Dame.

I could go into crazy levels of detail about how ESPN is beyond useless, how Rivals has a lot of bias and the most propensity to "phone it in" on certain prospects, and how Barton Simmons -- a guy who literally admitted they rated a guy higher because he committed to Bama and would get a good system/development there AND is the genius behind having 32 5-stars every year regardless of their actual talent -- is taking things a dangerous way for 247. But that would be a waste of keystrokes.

 

[T-Boone]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">247 Sports composite will no longer list players who have not received a 247 rating after some HSers duped Rivals (which then appeared in their composite)—more on that incident at the link: <a href="https://t.co/p0lHZba6h9">https://t.co/p0lHZba6h9</a> <a href="https://t.co/Cw7EO2Ax4r">https://t.co/Cw7EO2Ax4r</a></p>— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) <a href="https://twitter.com/RedditCFB/status/1096114697483571207?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Haha, Rivals gave a fake kid a 3 star rating because "he" tweeted an Alabama offer.

Haha, thats awesome.