well, they've obviously recruited better than that.
I don't know that it's obvious. What was Boise State's recruiting rankings when they beat OU?
There is a hell of a lot more to fielding a competitive football team than recruiting. This site is like a broken record sometimes.
Of course it's obvious. Utah is loaded with great players. Rivals has completely f*cked up their rankings.
Agree on the first part.
The question is:
-Did rivals really mess up and these where studs outta high school
-Or did these great players develop into great players in college
I would bet #2. Not necessarily being "coached up," but recruiting players that you can "mold" into good college players can't be measured. These kid's obviously didn't dominate in high school the way Julio Jones did, but they've improved drastically since coming to college and being coached and working hard for 3 or 4 years.

Finally some sanity in this thread...
1 - Of course, Rivals rankings are going to not be 100% correct and some 4 star guys will end up being worse than some 2 stars...
2 - The quantitative measures that they use to rank players are not infallible (see Jason Bennett). Rivals cannot take into account how hard a kid is going to work nor how well he will fit into the college system he is entering.
3 - Rivals measures get inflated once a Florida or Alabama starts recruiting a kid, so you have to keep that in mind as well.
4 - That being said, recruiting matters immensely, look what happened at Bama so quickly, but there are plenty of schools, such as the Utes, that do consistently well with less. KSU must do what the Utah's of the world do because at this point they are not going to walk into the homes of Julio Jones, etc. etc. and have a chance. Win some games, then maybe.