5 stars at Michigan before “stars” was a thing?

Steve Smith top ranked QB and top 3 overall…. 

Jansen, Woodson, Wheatley, Henson, Long, Woodley, Graham, Law

Elvis and Desmond played together in High School. If we were not recruiting Des we would never have known about Elvis. I think Gary Moeller 1st saw them both playing HS basketball together. 

Baraka? 

Who was the quarterback, maybe number 0 or 1, who was the elite athlete that never quite got there. Was it Antonio Bass? It's when I was in school, maybe 1997-99 timeframe?

The running back from Texas, Underwood I think, was very highly ranked. Not sure if stars were out then. He did nothing here. 

Frankly, I find the idea of grown men making a career out of cyberstalking teens and in-person stalking sidelines, schoolyards and locker rooms more than a little creepy. (Sorry, Sam, it's just plain creepy.) That kind of attention was just absent in football recruiting until ...maybe around the time Spielman appeared on a Wheaties box. Now, a lot of attention was paid to the top basketball recruits going much earlier, but still nothing like today.

Interesting list of players who entered HS in Fall 1979. 

AC is one of our UM Mount Rushmore candidates. Don't remember much about Carraway. Hewlett was the starter to open 1980 but got replaced by John Wangler in Game 2 (ND game) and held for kicks and later played Safety. 

Poor Sparty (Jon English) would have been much better off with Marino or Hostetler (who transferred later to WV before leading Giants to SB win). 

Here is the 1979 National 100 by Dr. Charles Holland, who was a football analyst and computer scientist. (I trimmed the list)

1. Eric Dickerson, RB, 6-3, 205, Sealy (Texas) - SMU
2. Don Mosebar, OT, 6-7, 265, Visalia (Calif.) - USC
3. John Elway, QB, 6-2, 185, Granada Hills (Calif.) - Stanford
7. Roger Craig, RB, 6-2, 202, Davenport (Ia.) – Nebraska
9. Mike Cade, RB, 6-1, 205, Eloy (Az.) – Michigan
12. Craig James, RB, 6-1, 210, Houston (Texas) – SMU
16. Jon English, QB, 6-3, 190, Birmingham (Mi.) – Michigan State
27. Anthony Carter, WR, 5-11, 165, Riviera Beach (Fla.) – Michigan
35. Winfred Carraway, ILB, 6-3, 235, Detroit (Mi.) – Michigan
38. Curt Warner, RB, 6-1, 180, Pineville (WV) – Penn State
58. Tim Spencer, RB, 6-2, 190, St. Clarisville (OH) – Ohio State
64. Rich Hewlett, QB, 6-1, 195, Plymouth (Mi.) – Michigan
74. Dan Marino, QB, 6-2, 185, Pittsburgh (Pa.) – Pittsburgh
77. Todd Blackledge, QB, 6-4, 200, North Canton (OH) – Penn State
96. Jeff Hostetler, QB, Davidsville (Pa.) – Penn State
 

Matt Gutierrez I remember being talked about as a 5 star.  Kelly Baraka as well

has anyone mentioned ricky powers?  that guy was as hyped a running back as i can recall and was a terrific player for us.

I think the biggest difference between today's recruiting era and the 80s and 90s is that today rankings are constantly revised and reconsidered as a player develops over high school and those all important summer camps.  

A great example is Kareem Walker in Jim's 2018 strong recruiting class, as a junior he was #1 running back in country but as he was further and further evaluated, he dropped to edges of top 100.  That didn't happen in the 80s and 90s, if a Tom Lemming drove to your rural high school for an appointment to "check out" your workout and made you #1 as a junior...you pretty much were set with that ranking till college. 

I got you.

I collected comprehensive recruiting information throughout the full 1990's via "The Wolverine" magazine, which would provide detailed info and rankings on Michigan recruiting targets throughout the year, referencing these sources:

(Athlon's    
Blue Chip Report    
BlueChip Illustrated    
Detroit Free Press    
Detroit News    
G&W Recruiting Report    
Midwest Football Recruiting News (Bill Kurelic)    
National Bluechips (Max Emfinger Editor)    
National Recruiting Advisor    
Parade    
Prep Football Report (Tom Lemming Editor)    
PrepStar    
Rivals    
Street & Smith    
SuperPrep    
USA Today)  

Seth knew about this because I mentioned it in a comment, and he requested it.  I made a spreadsheet that combined and categorized all of this information in detail for him and sent it to him.

He then converted all of the 1990's ranking schemes above into today's Star rankings.

He publishes this on the front page from time to time, usually with a "Jimmystats" reference in the title, that includes the 1990's data.  Here is an example:

https://mgoblog.com/content/jimmystats-2019-recruiting-comps-offense

(Tom Brady was a mere 3.81 Star!)

If you click on the full data are here link in the article, you will see the full data set of all of the players, including all of the 1990s players.  The conversion to today's Stars ranking is in column S.

I remember when "Parade All-American" meant 5-star.

Have followed Michigan football since 1969.  The first real "5 star"  player from the old days that I recall is Anthony Carter, who changed Michigan football.  He changed how Bo Schembechler thought.

But don't take my word for it:  https://annarborchronicle.com/2009/09/25/column-the-greatest-play-ive-ever-heard/

Justin Fargas (a.k.a., "the son of the guy who played Huggy Bear") was one of the country's top prospects, IIRC.

Tripp Welborne would have been a 5 star. Parade All American and number 1 WR in his class of 1986. Although he started at WR he ended up on defense where he became a 2 time all-american. Unfortunately, his career was derailed by an ACL injury his senior year 1990, which was basically career ending back then.

Not really gonna go player by player across time but that class after the 97 Championship would have been the best class in modern Michigan history. It had the top QB, HB, WR, 3rd ranked WR, 3 OL that were All-Americans by some publication and that was just the offense.

The issue with doing this is that back in the day the recruiting stuff was done by newspapers that didn't spend much time on scouting or small publications that focused heavily on scouting but were often heavily biased or bad at it. Lemming was a huge one for that back in the day where he was generally ok but overrated every Notre Dame recruit. His "end of year" top rankings would be full of ND guys that would never play a meaningful snap of CFB.

So when I say "we got the top ranked XYZ" , even that isn't uniform. One may have been a Parade All-American, another a WSJ, etc. One may have been the top ranked player at his position for this paper while he was 10th for another. It's hard to look at the rankings with accuracy if you ignore their career, both good and bad. For instance, I'm fairly sure that Ricky Powers was the top back that year for many but he went on to have a pretty ok but not amazing career at UM. So was he a 5* caliber recruit? To some but definitely not if we just fo by career or add that in. 

Guys like Wheatley, Howard and such were definites. Top priority recruits for every program. All publications, all opinions agreed. Woodson is funny because some had him as the best player in the country and others (Lemming, IIRC) wasn't sure what he'd be or how he'd pan out in college so he was a little softer on him. A top-100 guy but not future HOF Heisman winner. 

Here’s one link with some info:

https://www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/college-football-recruiting/2016/2/10/10960130/recruiting-rankings-1994-before-internet-peyton-manning

Drew Henson was the #1 player in the nation. 

Michigan cleaned up in recruiting in the 90's.  That was something of a golden era for M football recruiting.  Michigan had the #1 overall class at least twice in the 90's according to some of the magazines.  And the 1995 class which had both Charles Woodson and Tom Brady in it was not one of them.  I'm not sure who the exact five stars were by today's methods, but there would have been 2-3 per year.

Talent was not as consolidated back then as it looks like it is now based on the 247 and other rankings.  In reality, talent is not even as consolidated now as the rankings make it look, but that is another topic.