I'm not sure why people still fight about these recruiting services. It's a complete crapshoot. If these Rivals guys were excellent at talent evaluation, wouldn't you think a college or the NFL would hire them? For every example that shows recruiting stars matter, I can come up with an example that they do not mean much. To agree with you guys, though, the best evaluation of recruiting would be the other offers the prospect had.
Stars do matter, on the whole.
And the hyperbolic argument against it of "Well, how come these guys aren't working for the NFL" or for every "Ndamukong Suh I can name you 5 Jordy Nelson's taken in the 5th round that turned out to be great" is such horseshit.
See both articles:
http://www.thedailygopher.com/2010/4/22/1436208/nfl-draft-projections-vindicatehttp://m.si.com/news/wr/wr/detail/2541786/full;jsessionid=8A7F346192F3C18AC0D8B6D8421F3952.cnnsi1bThe reality is there is A LOT of money in the recruiting analysis and more and more resources being put towards it have generated much higher degrees of accuracy over the years. Are there still anomolies? Yes. But, on the whole, the the NFL draft in itself vindicates the star ranking system, and does so convincingly.
The overwhelming vast majority of NFL draft picks in the first four rounds were 4 stars or higher out of high school. That's a fact.
And the reality, whether any Snyder apologist wants to accept it or not, is that the collegiate programs with the higest ranked classes full of the highest ranked players, compete at the highest level of college football, play for championships, and consistently and have the most players taken in the draft annually. You can't even defend it otherwise.
So, we can pretend all day that they don't matter, but the reality is, if you don't recruit at a high level within the modern ranking structure, and you're going to depend on filling your roster with low level talent, you're going to perpetually be fighting an uphill battle and continually be behind the competitive curve.