Here's an article on the growth of the Caste System's recruiting industry. Rivals.com alone claims 180,000 paid subscribers.
The article states that the rankings of high school players by the services are "arbitrary," but elsewhere in the Post-Gazette's sports page today they list how five what they call "experts" (Rivals, Scout.com, ESPN, Tom Lemming and Super Prep) have ranked this year's recruiting classes. All five have Florida number one, with the rest of the top ten being essentially the same programs in slightly different orders -- USC, LSU, Tennessee, South Carolina, Auburn, Michigan, etc.
The booming recruiting industry is "ground zero" when it comes to keeping the Caste System firmly in placein the NFL's"farm system" of major I-A programs.
<H2>National Signing Day: Following prospects becomes big business</H2>
<H3>Recruiting services booming on Internet</H3>
Thursday, February 08, 2007
By Colin Dunlap, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When the hard numbers about interest in college football recruiting are revealed, the yield is staggering.
And there's no arguing that interest has paralleled the growth of the Internet. What once was a cottage industry has become big business.
"As far as subscribers, we have more than 180,000," said Bobby Burton, editor in chief of Rivals.com, a popular network of more than 100 college Web sites with a large focus on recruiting.
Allen Wallace, national recruiting analyst for Scout.com and publisher of Super Prep magazine, remembers when it wasn't like this, when the sometimes maniacal subculture of "recruitniks" wasn't as big or rabid as it is now.
"I first got into the business in 1985," he said. "Those were the days when there were only magazines and that was also when you wrote everything down on a yellow legal pad and kept all your notes on there.
"Now, with the Internet, well, frankly, I don't know if anyone could have envisioned the interest in recruiting growing to where it is today."
Representatives from Rivals.com and Scout.com said they expected in excess of 50 million hits on their sites yesterday, college football's national letter of intent day, when high school prospects make their college choices official.
Assuming those claims are factual, and working off exactly 50 million hits, Rivals.com and Scout.com would have received 34,722 hits per minute during a 24-hour span.
In 1993, Burton started Rivals.com because he identified an audience that wanted to know increasingly more about high school prospects potentially heading to their favorite college football program.
The growth has stunned Burton, a Texan who heads the Tennessee-based company that offers monthly memberships for $9.95 and yearly memberships for $99.95.
"I remember in 1997, we were unbelievably happy we hit 5,000 subscribers," he said. "Now, though, the growth is indescribable."
Burton's site, like most, ranks prospects on a star system, offers message boards and attempts to break news on high school players in terms of which college or colleges they might be favoring.
Tom Luginbill, a former quarterback at Georgia Tech and Eastern Kentucky, is the national recruiting director for ESPN's Scouts Inc., another site that evaluates high school players. Luginbill knows the value in such Internet sites, but he also understands there can be a dark side.
"Is the Internet a problem in some regards in recruiting? Yes," Luginbill said. "Often times, at certain sites, claims are not legitimate and can be egregiously wrong. Some people are in a position where they never shed any negative light on certain young men and you have to understand that they are being subjective because they could be aligned with certain college programs."
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Bruce Gradkowski has an interesting outlook on the exponential growth of recruiting coverage. A 2001 Seton-LaSalle High School graduate, he has a brother, Gino, a senior at the same high school, who signed with West Virginia yesterday. Bruce remembers a lukewarm feeling prospects had about the recruiting Web sites in 2001 and sees now, through Gino, how it has skyrocketed.
"The Internet has grown so much with recruiting, even in the short time it has been since I came out of Seton-LaSalle," Gradkowski said. "I know my brother and his friends look at those rankings all the time, and they read all the stuff on there about recruiting.
"Gino showed me one time where he was one of the top guards in the country in those rankings, and I think it honestly pushed Gino harder to maybe boost his ranking a little."
In the end, the rankings on such sites are arbitrary, which the people associated with such sites readily admit. They also aren't taken into consideration or under advisement by college coaches. But they make for great fodder and banter between fans.
"The reality is that [Texas coach] Mack Brown or [Florida coach] Urban Meyer or [Penn State coach] Joe Paterno or [Pitt coach] Dave Wannstedt couldn't care less if we rank a guy a two-, three-, four-, or five-star recruit, it doesn't matter to those guys one bit," said Burton, in his signature Texas twang.
"Those coaches need to find the best recruit that fits their program because that recruit, directly, could impact whether that coach has a job a few years down the road.
"But, in saying that, there are a whole lot of people in front of their computers who have a huge interest in what we do."
The numbers prove it.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07039/760372-365.stmEdited by: Don Wassall
The article states that the rankings of high school players by the services are "arbitrary," but elsewhere in the Post-Gazette's sports page today they list how five what they call "experts" (Rivals, Scout.com, ESPN, Tom Lemming and Super Prep) have ranked this year's recruiting classes. All five have Florida number one, with the rest of the top ten being essentially the same programs in slightly different orders -- USC, LSU, Tennessee, South Carolina, Auburn, Michigan, etc.
The booming recruiting industry is "ground zero" when it comes to keeping the Caste System firmly in placein the NFL's"farm system" of major I-A programs.
<H2>National Signing Day: Following prospects becomes big business</H2>
<H3>Recruiting services booming on Internet</H3>
Thursday, February 08, 2007
By Colin Dunlap, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When the hard numbers about interest in college football recruiting are revealed, the yield is staggering.
And there's no arguing that interest has paralleled the growth of the Internet. What once was a cottage industry has become big business.
"As far as subscribers, we have more than 180,000," said Bobby Burton, editor in chief of Rivals.com, a popular network of more than 100 college Web sites with a large focus on recruiting.
Allen Wallace, national recruiting analyst for Scout.com and publisher of Super Prep magazine, remembers when it wasn't like this, when the sometimes maniacal subculture of "recruitniks" wasn't as big or rabid as it is now.
"I first got into the business in 1985," he said. "Those were the days when there were only magazines and that was also when you wrote everything down on a yellow legal pad and kept all your notes on there.
"Now, with the Internet, well, frankly, I don't know if anyone could have envisioned the interest in recruiting growing to where it is today."
Representatives from Rivals.com and Scout.com said they expected in excess of 50 million hits on their sites yesterday, college football's national letter of intent day, when high school prospects make their college choices official.
Assuming those claims are factual, and working off exactly 50 million hits, Rivals.com and Scout.com would have received 34,722 hits per minute during a 24-hour span.
In 1993, Burton started Rivals.com because he identified an audience that wanted to know increasingly more about high school prospects potentially heading to their favorite college football program.
The growth has stunned Burton, a Texan who heads the Tennessee-based company that offers monthly memberships for $9.95 and yearly memberships for $99.95.
"I remember in 1997, we were unbelievably happy we hit 5,000 subscribers," he said. "Now, though, the growth is indescribable."
Burton's site, like most, ranks prospects on a star system, offers message boards and attempts to break news on high school players in terms of which college or colleges they might be favoring.
Tom Luginbill, a former quarterback at Georgia Tech and Eastern Kentucky, is the national recruiting director for ESPN's Scouts Inc., another site that evaluates high school players. Luginbill knows the value in such Internet sites, but he also understands there can be a dark side.
"Is the Internet a problem in some regards in recruiting? Yes," Luginbill said. "Often times, at certain sites, claims are not legitimate and can be egregiously wrong. Some people are in a position where they never shed any negative light on certain young men and you have to understand that they are being subjective because they could be aligned with certain college programs."
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Bruce Gradkowski has an interesting outlook on the exponential growth of recruiting coverage. A 2001 Seton-LaSalle High School graduate, he has a brother, Gino, a senior at the same high school, who signed with West Virginia yesterday. Bruce remembers a lukewarm feeling prospects had about the recruiting Web sites in 2001 and sees now, through Gino, how it has skyrocketed.
"The Internet has grown so much with recruiting, even in the short time it has been since I came out of Seton-LaSalle," Gradkowski said. "I know my brother and his friends look at those rankings all the time, and they read all the stuff on there about recruiting.
"Gino showed me one time where he was one of the top guards in the country in those rankings, and I think it honestly pushed Gino harder to maybe boost his ranking a little."
In the end, the rankings on such sites are arbitrary, which the people associated with such sites readily admit. They also aren't taken into consideration or under advisement by college coaches. But they make for great fodder and banter between fans.
"The reality is that [Texas coach] Mack Brown or [Florida coach] Urban Meyer or [Penn State coach] Joe Paterno or [Pitt coach] Dave Wannstedt couldn't care less if we rank a guy a two-, three-, four-, or five-star recruit, it doesn't matter to those guys one bit," said Burton, in his signature Texas twang.
"Those coaches need to find the best recruit that fits their program because that recruit, directly, could impact whether that coach has a job a few years down the road.
"But, in saying that, there are a whole lot of people in front of their computers who have a huge interest in what we do."
The numbers prove it.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07039/760372-365.stmEdited by: Don Wassall
