DON'T UNBUCKLE YET

...say that he doesn't perceive himself as a talent evaluator. He has his ear to the ground. He has contacts. People talk to him. But he would say that he doesn't rank players or attempt to project them. He takes the word of others and tempers it with his own judgments. That's not to say, like me or you or anyone on this board, that he doesn't look at some tape and form an opinion. It does mean that his opinions are primarily derivative.

Evaluating talent is hard as hell. The variables are just so broad and hard to parse. Even in the NBA and NFL drafts, where resources are massive, data extant, and the level of competition more static, judgments are really hard to make. In MLB, where the data accrues over varying playing fields and where the kids are at different stages of maturity, randomness becomes more profound. Hence, Oakland (Billy B) prefers colleges as proving grounds, where some of these vagaries are minimized.

Brian Cook tends to be a fan of the star system, since it can be demonstrated that 5 star prospects  are more likely to be successful than four star guys and these more than three star players, etc.. The taxonomy we have has merit, even if it is an ordering that contains massive error rates and variation.

I think Brian's point is correct, but tends to assume coaches and scouts are just throwing darts at a board. Any random 5-star "choice" is more likely than not to outperform any random choice of 4 stars. But we all want our coach/evaluators to be better than random. D'Antonio, Mr. Happy, has proven that he and his staff can find kids who work in his system, regardless of what the Services think. Same, of course, for John Beilien. But even the best at projecting talent will miss. Think JJ Watt, as one example of hundreds. And Hoke proved that you can be worse than random, or just plain unlucky, with some highly regarded kids. I buy into the notion of Harbaugh's competence and creativity and intelligence. I don't buy into the idea that Hoke was a rube. I think he was both unexceptional and unlucky. [OTOH, one of his coaches, off the record, told me he thought the Ringer kid would be a big star here. Well, anyone can make a mistake, but damn he was confident about it. But, rethinking, not sure what the isuue was with him. Injuries? Jake Ryan wasn't much of a prospect. Same for Desmond Morgan. Mike D'Andrea was. So, too, Ryan's running mate in HS. I think these two OSU guys just got hurt, and never really came back. We may be facing the same thing with Drake Harris, alas.]

So, we may have some tea leaves or lodestones. I have tried, very hard, to not publicize my writings, either by lobbying Brian or Sam, since I feel they should have complete control of their own forums. But I spent a lot of space on the topic in The Search for the Unified Field Theory (Football Version)---my apologies to my host--should anyone be interested.

Craig