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NW St...
http://www.nsudemons.com/story.asp?ID=3433

Rivals.com ranks Demons' signing class 9th nationally
2/7/2008
FOOTBALL: Demons' list of signees impresses observers

NATCHITOCHES — Northwestern State put together one of the top 10 football recruiting classes in the nation’s Football Championship Subdivision, according to the Rivals.com recruiting service.

The Demons’ 31-man class announced Wednesday ranked No. 9 in the FCS and 128th overall alongside the Football Bowl Subdivision teams, according to the Rivals.com website...

...Eastern Washington’s class was tops in the FCS, followed by Illinois State, Appalachian State, McNeese State, Massachusetts, Richmond, Georgetown, Villanova, Northwestern St. and a three-way tie for 10th between Chattanooga, Rhode Island and Northern Colorado...

any of you out there have the link to the Rivals.com site to find the FCS and SLC rankings, or how they came up with an FCS top 10 ranking system?

http://mcneesesports.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/020708aaa.html

McNeese football recruiting class ranked fourth best in FCS division
Ranking was by rivals.com

Feb. 7, 2008

McNeese State's football recruiting class for 2008 has been ranked among the top five nationally in the FCS division (formerly 1-AA) by Rivals.com.

Rivals.com is a national recruiting website that keeps up with year round recruiting of athletes and then ranks its findings.

The Cowboy class was ranked No. 4 in the nation among the FCS schools. Eastern Washington had the top ranking and was followed by Illinois State, Appalachian State, McNeese and UMass...

http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/teamrank.asp?Year=2008&Page=5&PosType=0&Sort=0

Basically, Rivals adds up the total number of stars awarded to each player (many have no rating) and divides by the total number of players signed. The ranking has SOME merit when it comes to the BCS conference schools, but falls apart the lower down the chain you go. For starters, most of players who sign with FCS are never evaluated, while some who do have stars, only have them because they got an FBS offer over the summer after a combine. They never lose the ranking even if the FBS school dropped the offer. Meanwhile, kids who aren't rated yet get bombarded with late FBS offers, but still sign with an FCS, never get bumped up. It's pretty much a mathematical formula based on flimsy evaluation methods. Nothing more, nothing less.

We signed five players who received at least a two star rating, including two three stars, but we aren't mentioned anywhere. It doesn't matter one way or the other, but it's obvious there isn't much research to it.

WWL 870 AM had a fellow on from one of the ratings services who admitted that the ratings for the Top 30 at each position are basically who everyone has on the recruiting list and the others are pretty much a crap shoot.....he did not mention any efforts to get actual data such as 40 speed, etc but rather the primary method is to talk to the recruiters at the Top 20-30 programs and "compare" who is on which list......probably OK in many regards but this is also subject to the Notre Dame syndrome..... that is, if ND is recruiting a kid then other schools start going after him and before long he is on everybody's list although he would not start for a mediocre FCS team.....these ratings are interesting to follow but roughly as accurate as pre-season polls once you get below the athletes...this fellow claimed that the data shows that the Top 10 ranked teams over the past decade also had the most Top 20-30 players.

GoBears!!

I have no problem with giving weight to the number of quality schools recruiting a guy, but what a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of schools use the recruiting services to formulate lists. It's a Catch-22 to some degree. Not to mention there are limited numbers of contacts and in person evaluations that each school can have for one player, so no doubt mistakes are made. And the further down the recruiting chain you go, the less information there is and trying to rank players at that point is a crap shoot at best, unless you have a good evaluator working for a service who gets out and sees a lot of guys.