Nunnsense: At Louisville, Recruiting Rankings Don’t Determine Success

With there now being 17 verbal commitments to BirdGang ’18, there has much talk about a recent commit, Tutu Atwell. The excitement is that he is a dual-threat quarterback from Northwestern high school in Miami Fl. Yes, that is the same school one Teddy Bridgwater attended. The mere mention of Teddy’s name being associated with Tutu, brings another level of expectations and attention. But after you do your research, you will find that he is only ranked as a 2 star by 247sports and 3 star by several other sites. You will also find that he is listed as an athlete and not expected to play QB at Louisville.

But what really does a star rating mean? And who really cares about star ratings? A star rating does not guarantee success at the college or NFL level nor does it restrict being offered scholarships from power 5 schools. Bobby Petrino said he doesn’t care about star ratings but rather he recruits kids that fit his system and kids that can play football. Rick Pitino said he doesn’t care about star ratings either. He recruits ” Louisville kids.” Meaning kids that want to play his way and that do well off the court also. 

Both Russ Smith and Eric Wood were 2 star recruits proving that scouting is much more important than any recruiting ranking. Petrino and his staff scout out the players that best fit what they are trying to do. Petrino loves speed and athleticism. That’s something you can’t really teach. Petrino can teach someone how to throw or catch a ball better. He can teach a kid how to block or tackle better but the innate ability to make a play or having that football instinct is something that you can’t teach. And quite frankly, those intangibles alone are not enough to get players a very high star rating.

However, those star ratings are not totally off. They are very often accurate in predicting what type of player a coach may be getting.

But signing a class of highly rated players does not always equal success. It’s what you do with the talent on your team. Basically, it’s all about the coach.

All this recruiting talk had me wondering how Louisville has recently compared to other schools of interest when it comes to football recruiting class rankings and how the schools faired with that talent. ( I included Wisconsin because they have done very well with perceived less talent)

• RANKINGS ARE FROM RIVALS.COM

As Always, GO CARDS!