Who is the best in the Recruiting Rankings Industry?

Every year college football fans study the recruits set to enroll with their beloved team.  They go over the rankings to figure out what their team is getting.  No one knows which rankings are the most accurate, so usually they just go by the rankings that best favor their college team.

What if there was a way to figure out who does the best job of ranking high school prospects?  This post sets out to try and achieve this goal in a somewhat efficient manner. 

Methodology

The problem with judging rankings is that it is all subjective.  Often fans and experts alike cannot agree which player was better even after their college career is over.  As a result, to judge the rankings we used the only truly objective metric we have, the NFL Draft. 

It would be cumbersome to go through every player drafted, and every ranked player that went undrafted so we chose a system that could be executed in a more time efficient manner.  For the purposes of our rankings we are going to use ESPN, 247Sports and Rivals.  They have been in the business of ranking these players for a while and have ranked all the classes that contributed to this draft.

First, we look at the players drafted in the 1^st round of the 2020 NFL Draft, and where they were ranked by the recruiting industry.  Then we calculate the difference between the draft position and the ranking, if a player is not ranked, we will assign a ranking of 350 for that site, so that no one can get credit for a player not ranked.  The closer your ranking is to the actual draft position the more points you receive.  Points are given as follows:

Difference in Ranking	Points Awarded
1 to 20 spots	5
21 to 50 spots	4
51 to 100 spots	3
101 to 150 spots	2
150 to 250 spots	1
More than 250 Spots	0

Then after looking at the players selected in the 1^st round, we go back and look at the players ranked in the top 32 by each service that were available in this year’s draft.  We list each of these players and compare their ranking to where they were drafted.  Undrafted players get a draft position of 1000 so no one can get credit for 1 of their top 32 going undrafted.  Using the same table as above we score each service and find the cumulative score. 

This way we will be able to grade based on 1) who the actual best players were (the top 32 picks in the draft), and 2) who the services thought the best players were (players ranked in each site’s top 32).

Results

Now the fun part.  Time to find out who is the 2020 champion of recruiting rankings.

Pick	Player	247 Rank	Rivals Rank	ESPN Rank	247 Diff	Rivals Diff	ESPN Diff	247 Points	Rivals Points	ESPN Points
1	Joe Burrow	210	350	298	209	349	297	1	0	0
2	Chase Young	4	8	27	2	6	25	5	5	4
3	Jeff Okudah	12	16	7	9	13	4	5	5	5
4	Andrew Thomas	37	88	40	33	84	36	4	3	4
5	Tua Tagovailoa	22	53	57	17	48	52	5	4	3
6	Justin Herbert	350	350	350	344	344	344	0	0	0
7	Derrick Brown	6	17	9	1	10	2	5	5	5
8	Isaiah Simmons	350	350	350	342	342	342	0	0	0
9	CJ Henderson	116	226	131	107	217	122	2	1	2
10	Jedrick Wills	56	25	33	46	15	23	4	5	4
11	Mekhi Becton	350	195	350	339	184	339	0	1	0
12	Henry Ruggs	24	125	166	12	113	154	5	2	1
13	Tristan Wirfs	126	350	350	113	337	337	2	0	0
14	Javon Kinlaw	350	350	350	336	336	336	0	0	0
15	Jerry Juedy	35	19	20	20	4	5	5	5	5
16	AJ Terrell	61	13	106	45	3	90	4	5	3
17	CeeDee Lamb	246	72	290	229	55	273	1	3	0
18	Austin Jackson	21	77	54	3	59	36	5	3	4
19	Damon Arnette	350	350	350	331	331	331	0	0	0
20	K’Lavion Chaisson	11	110	34	9	90	14	5	3	5
21	Jalen Reagor	69	249	43	48	228	22	4	1	4
22	Justin Jefferson	350	350	350	328	328	328	0	0	0
23	Kenneth Murray	350	350	350	327	327	327	0	0	0
24	Cesar Ruiz	55	41	28	31	17	4	4	5	5
25	Brandon Aiyuk	350	350	350	325	325	325	0	0	0
26	Jordan Love	350	350	350	324	324	324	0	0	0
27	Jordyn Brooks	350	350	350	323	323	323	0	0	0
28	Patrick Queen	350	214	350	322	186	322	0	1	0
29	Isaiah Wilson	39	17	2	10	12	27	5	5	4
30	Noah Igbinoghene	350	350	350	320	320	320	0	0	0
31	Jeff Gladney	350	350	350	319	319	319	0	0	0
32	Clyde Edwards-Helaire	350	350	219	318	318	187	0	0	1

Using these results, we arrive at the following scores:

Network	Total for Players in Round 1
247Sports	71
Rivals	62
ESPN	59

Now we jump to the players eligible for this draft that were not drafted in the Top 32.  Here we gather the data by each service because there are different players ranked for each service in their top 32.

ESPN:

Name	Year	Rank	Draft Position	Diff	Points
Keisean Lucier South	2015	22	1000	978	0
George Campbell	2015	7	1000	993	0
Blake Barnett	2015	23	1000	977	0
Shea Patterson	2016	15	1000	985	0
Jacob Eason	2016	13	122	109	2
Shaq Smith	2016	21	1000	979	0
Marlon Davidson	2016	32	47	15	5
Levonta Taylor	2016	5	1000	995	0
Keandre Jones	2016	28	1000	972	0
McTelvin Agim	2016	11	95	84	3
Rashad Lawrence	2016	12	131	119	2
Benito Jones	2016	7	1000	993	0
Jeffrey McCullogh	2016	26	1000	974	0
Kristian Fulton	2016	27	61	34	4
Tee Higgens	2017	18	33	15	5
Cam Akers	2017	9	52	43	4
Donovan Peoples Jones	2017	22	187	165	1

247Sports:

Player	Year	Rank	Draft Position	Diff	Points
Blake Barnett	2015	23	1000	977	0
Osa Masina	2015	25	1000	975	0
Chidi Okeke	2015	22	1000	978	0
Shea Patterson	2016	3	1000	997	0
Jacob Eason	2016	3	122	119	2
Oluwale Betiku	2016	9	1000	991	0
Tommy Kraemer	2016	8	1000	992	0
Levonta Taylor	2016	11	1000	989	0
Tavien Feaster	2016	14	1000	986	0
Michael Divinity	2016	18	1000	982	0
Rashad Lawrence	2016	20	131	111	2
Michael Pittman Jr	2016	22	34	12	5
Terrell Lewis	2016	23	84	61	3
Kristian Fulton	2016	28	61	33	4
McTelvin Agim	2016	31	95	64	3
AJ Epenesa	2017	6	54	48	4
Cam Akers	2017	7	52	45	4
Donovan Peoples Jones	2017	26	187	161	1
Colby Parkinson	2017	28	133	105	2

Rivals:

Player	Year	Rank	Draft Position	Diff	Points
Keisean Lucier South	2015	14	1000	986	0
George Campbell	2015	26	1000	974	0
John Houston	2015	30	1000	970	0
Shea Patterson	2016	3	1000	997	0
Jacob Eason	2016	7	122	115	2
Shaq Smith	2016	6	1000	994	0
Marlon Davidson	2016	25	47	22	4
Levonta Taylor	2016	10	1000	990	0
Keandre Jones	2016	30	1000	970	0
Tee Higgens	2017	15	33	18	5
Jake Fromm	2017	20	167	147	2
Darnay Holmes	2017	27	110	83	3
Jacob Phillips	2017	29	97	68	3
AJ Epenesa	2017	30	54	24	4
Cam Akers	2017	3	52	49	4
Donovan Peoples Jones	2017	12	187	175	1

And finally, the final score board:

Network	Total for Players in Round 1	Total for Players in Service’s Top 32 Not Drafted in Round 1	Total Score
247Sports	71	30	101
Rivals	62	28	90
ESPN	59	26	85

Conclusions:

This year 247Sports wins by a nice margin.  Rivals and ESPN were closer to each other than they were to 247Sports on the final scoreboard.   However, Rivals should get some credit for having the fewest undrafted players ranked in their top 32, that were eligible for this draft.  Rivals had 7 such players while both the other services had 9. 

It’s impressive there are quite a few players the services were spot on in ranking. That’s really a credit to the hard work these sites do, its hard enough to tell if a college senior will be successful in the NFL, and here they are predicting where a 17 year old will be drafted 3 to 5 years later.

Lastly, if you did not win this year, work on your craft and get better!  We will be back to do it again next year and hopefully many years to come.  If you are interested in past years contact us and we may dig into them over the summer and post the findings.  If you have your own rankings and want to be considered feel free to contact us, you must have rankings that were published for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 recruiting class to be eligible.

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