In modern high school sports, the national and state rankings of each individual player have become the most important feature in the eyes of fans. It seems whenever an athlete getting recruited by colleges is mentioned, someone always brings up the player’s rankings. Why is this so common? And what makes rankings so important?
Basketball and golf coach Greg Guiler said the rankings are adding stress to the sports.
“Individual rankings create a ton of pressure for players,” Guiler said. The whole process feels murky at best. Politics can sometimes play a role, as it feels like there is pressure for certain ranking groups to appease certain constituents.”
How are critics expected to rank everyone fairly when some players get significantly more publicity than others? It also raises interest that some once lowly-touted high school recruits, such as Jalen Brunson, have grown to be superstars, while some top-ranked players, such as Zion Williamson, who was expected to be the next LeBron, didn’t quite pan out.
The pressure of rankings doesn’t only affects the athletes involved. The pressure on coaches with their jobs on the line is immense, especially if the boosters for the school are expecting to see a winning team.
“Put yourself in the shoes of the head coach at a D1 program that is in a Power 4 conference… You identify the highest-ranked unsigned players and start to go after them,” Guiler said. “Because if you can get three top-10 players to choose your school, the boosters immediately feel good about the money, and your reputation as an elite recruiter earns you a contract extension or at least gives you higher odds of landing a marquee job if you were to get fired for not winning right away.”
However, if a coach discovers a more beneficial player, but that player isn’t as highly ranked, they are still highly likely to choose the more publicized player.
A key factor of the coaches’ decision-making sits in the risk to their jobs and reputations. Collegiate coaches are only allowed a specific number of scholarships per year. If a coach took a risk and gave a scholarship to a lower-ranked player, and it did not work out, then that coach would be ridiculed for passing up on an opportunity for a “better” player.
“As a result, a lot of really capable coaches have left the game earlier than they might have (one being Jay Wright, legendary coach of the aforementioned Brunson, who had plenty of age and energy left to keep coaching at a high level).” Guiler said.
This inconvenience to the coaches, caused by the rankings of high school athletes, will continue to drastically change the landscape of collegiate athletics. With more illustrious coaches like Wright choosing to retire and avoid these hassles, the quality of the sports go down, which could lead to a loss of viewership.
Sam Khan, a veteran college football reporter for The Athletic, with over a decade of experience, says college coaches are reluctant to admit the influence of rankings.
“Every college coach would tell you that they don’t put weight on it,” Khan said. “But that’s a lie. They all look at them.”
Still, Khan makes a player distinction between looking and trusting. A lower-ranked player can be recruited patiently, but a five-star cannot.
“If he’s a four-star or five-star, if he’s a top 100 kid in the country, you have to be aggressive,” Khan said. “Because those recruits, for better or worse, whether the evaluation is right or wrong, the other schools are going to offer them, and the fans are going to want them.”
Behind the rankings, Khan says that the industry has grown more professional over time. The two most notable services, 247Sports and On3, which now owns Rivals.com, employ dedicated evaluators with a good collegiate scouting background. This contrasts with the early days when reporters created obvious conflicts of interest.
“If you had a good relationship with somebody, or you covered a certain program or conference, you might give a little bit more of a favorable evaluation to those young men,” Khan said. “Today, there is a little bit more separation between reporter and scout.”
When it comes to what scouts actually value, Khan says the answer surprises fans.
Rankings are not meant to predict college success. They are meant to project professional potential, which means physical traits almost always outweigh production.
“Body types and physical traits are always going to reign supreme and carry more weight than pure production,” Khan said. “If you’re looking for a tiebreaker between the 6-foot quarterback who threw for 4,000 yards and the 6’4”, 225-pound guy who runs like the wind, there’s going to be a lot of people who lean toward the bigger kid because he’s already built like an NFL quarterback.”
That projection-first mentality that coaches have also depends on geography. Players from more prominent states benefit from the reputation of the competition level, while equally talented prospects from less-recognized regions may not receive the same notice.
“A prospect from Texas who plays in 6A Texas high school football against a young man who plays in South Dakota, the Texas kid’s probably gonna get a little bit more deference, because people know what the quality of Texas high school football is,” Khan said.
Ranking will continue to affect the landscape of collegiate athletics for the foreseeable future in controversial ways due to the sporadic and arbitrary nature of the system.