LSU recruiting

One of the things that pains me to hear is the yearly bitching among the LSU faithful that we are not recruiting as well as other schools. First I digress. A booming internet industry has arisen within the last couple of years dealing with football recruiting. Prior to the internet age, there existed recruiting services whose primary job was to observe and subjectively rate high school football players, usually on a one-to five-star rating. These services existed in newsletter and magazine form and were only read by those in the football industry. With the advent of the internet, rabid college football fans everywhere had access to these previously inaccessable ratings, reports and news for the nominal fee of around twelve dollars a month. Suddenly, these rabid college football fans could see who their team was recruiting, who was interested in what college, and who committed (verbally) to what college. LSU fans could see, in real time, that we have, for instance, fourteen verbal committments, six of whom are "four stars" and eight are "three stars". This causes great consternation among the LSU faithful, who see that Georgia has four "five star" verbal commitments, Florida has four "five star commitments" and LSU has none. This, in the mindset of a LSU fan, means catastrophic failure in recruiting.

Now for the reality. The "star ratings" are as subjective as who you think the prettiest actress on television is. Sure there are a number of "five star" recruits that become all americans and stars of their teams. However, the number of three star, two star and other players who don't merit a "star" have gone on to become talented and fearsome college players. The message to LSU fans who fret over our recruiting is - chill out. These coaches know what they are doing and we'll be okay.