Throwback Thursday: Flawed System

Yesterday was National Signing Day. It's a life-changing day for high school football players across the nation. Unfortunately, a college's interest in any of those football players is dependent on a ranking system that is sketchy at best. Some colleges like Alabama, Florida St., LSU, Ohio St., and others likely won't even look at a player if the various scouting services don't give that player at least three stars. According to Scout, Alabama's recruits this year average 4.04 stars. LSU isn't far behind at 3.91. No scouting system is perfect as all scouting systems are based entirely on the opinion of the viewer. The problem with the ranking of high school football players is that some of these players are often saddled with a grade without having been seen by the grader. I'm not sure how you can accurately judge a football player without seeing him in person. If not in person, you have to at least coaches film of entire games. At best, these "scouts" have seen a highlight reel of some of these kids. There are terrific high school football players out there getting ignored because someone that has never actually seen them play says that they are 2-star, or worse. Some of these kids haven't even hit a growth spurt.

All is not lost for the high school football player that is considered a 2-star slappy. 46 players in this past Super Bowl were considered 2-star football players. Some of those were even unranked. There is no better proof of the flawed ranking of high school football players than the recruiting, or lack of recruiting, of Pleasant Valley High School quarterback Aaron Rodgers in 2001. All he got was an offer to compete for a scholarship as a walk-on at Illinois. He was a terrific high school quarterback. So what if he was only 5-10 and 165 lbs. Johnny Manziel isn't much bigger. Manziel might not have been bigger at the same age. In order to continue football, Rodgers had to attend nearby Butte Community College. It's entirely possible that we'd never know Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback, if Cal coach Jeff Tedford wasn't recruiting Butte tight end Garrett Cross. Someone had to throw to Cross. Tedford was surprised that Rodgers had not been recruited earlier. Everyone had that same surprise when they finally saw Aaron Rodgers throw the football a year later at Cal. He's the best college quarterback that I've ever seen in person. Better than Drew Bledsoe, Ryan Leaf, Matt Leinart, Nick Foles. Only Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer and Joe Roth are close. His talent as a quarterback was obvious immediately. His physical stature as a high school student shouldn't have mattered. Rodgers was ignored in high school because no one took the time to see him throw a football. Chico, California is a bit of a drive but if you're going to rank high school football players you better be thorough enough to make that drive. Rodgers' drop to the 24th pick of the 2005 NFL Draft shows that NFL scouts should be more thorough as well. Even his current head coach Mike McCarthy passed on him as the San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator.

The ridiculous scouting of Aaron Rodgers at both the high school and college level bothers me the most as his passing skills were always so obvious to me. It's the ranking system of high school players that's truly flawed. The 49ers and a bunch of other NFL teams may have hacked up their scouting of Rodgers but he was going to get drafted. It's almost blind luck that he had the chance to play at Cal. Maybe someone would have finally found him after he played a second year at Butte Community College but we'll never really know. At one point, he considered quitting football to study for law school. There'd be a lot of sad Packers fans if that ever happened but then those fans would never have known what they might have had. I'm not sure what's worse. The scouting organizations that claim to be thorough or the college coaches that depend on those rankings. At least this past Super Bowl showed that getting two stars doesn't mean the end of football for a lot of kids.