Highest-rated Rivals players I could find from 1998 to 2001. The first two seemed to pan out.
#12 Ell Roberson (1999)
#39 Josh Buhl (1999)
#60 Chris Boggas (2000)
#63 Bobby Walker (1999)
#84 Ayo Saba (2001)
#93 Jerome Janet (2001)
Before 1998, you have to start cobbling together Tom Lemming's ratings and USA Today HS football player ratings to get a national picture... which I'm not going to do.
I lied, I kept looking into this. First thing I remembered was fans used to complain Juco studs weren't ranked by some services before Rivals. Lemming, USA Today and Superprep were the big players before Rivals.
Our top-rated HS recruits in 1997 were Eric Gooden and Julius McMillan (top 100 players). Both totally washed out.
Our top-rated HS recruit in 1996 was Jonathan Beasley (top 100). Bishop was probably up there too, but ranked as a Juco, so I can't be sure.
So from 1996 to 2001 we had nine top-100 recruits. Here's how I'd rate their careers at KSU.
Roberson *****(5)
Buhl *****(5)
Beasley ****(4.5)
Walker ****(4.5)
Saba **(2)
Boggas (0)
Janet (0)
Gooden (0)
McMillan (0)
I'd guess this is pretty average. But it seems we've always lived off the 3-star players (and underranked Juco studs).
In 1995 we were still a building program. I didn't see any top 100 recruits in 1995, but our top-rated HS recruits in 1995 were Larry Holmes (QB, who?), Turelle Williams, Darren Howard, Pat Curry (who are these guys?), Lin Dotson, and Martez Wesley. Our top Juco recruits were Cody Lee Smith, Thad Swazer, Naeen Mills, Eric Janeau, and Jabbar Williams. (Silver Lining: Thank god our QB recruits in this class didn't work out since it led us to recruit Bishop the next year!)
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