How do you rate the UM recruiting sites (Rivals/247/On3)?

First, ratings are not (good/bad/worst) they're Great/Also Great/Great Too. Michigan is extremely lucky to have the depth of coverage we have. I subscribe to and recommend them all. Also I'm just talking about the headliners, not to denigrate the people who work for them, but because this isn't really about the reporters but the insiders.

1. 247. Sam Webb is the #1 insider and has been for 30 years, because he's the program's person of choice to share information, and because he's too good at getting the information anyway for them to ever give the job to someone else. That does mean he leans well into pro-program. Well worth it. Having both him AND Steve Lorenz is unfair. Steve has a better finger on what's going on than anybody, is the most intelligent person on the beat, and is succinct. They also have Brice Marich for the dirty work, who is far more useful (and likeable) than most people who end up in that position.

Nationally, they're the most accurate of the sites that do ratings, and by far the most useful. I appreciate their regional approach (adopted from Scout) because each regional expert knows his territory well, has a strong basis of comparison to go with his history, and none of them are so tied to specific schools like you get with state- and local-based scouting. It does create some wait for one of them to get around to an eval though.

2. On3. EJ Holland was a 5-star recruit for this biz. He is probably one of the most deeply embedded guys in the industry because he comes from the 7v7 circuit that produces a lot of talent. He's also oriented to high school, not college, so the high schoolers themselves feel like he's on their side not Michigan's. Kids and coaches give the same quotes to every outlet; I often find myself using the ones Holland gets because there's always a little bit more in there. He's also important for scouting because he's getting thoughts from other players on guys we're interested in, and there's no better way to know how good a guy is than going against him yourself.

Balas is a bulldog. He has good sources and by weight gets the MOST insider info and more quickly, but the cost to that is sometimes he doesn't have some important context yet. You have to do more yourself to interpret what it means, because that's not Balas's strong suit. YMMV on the delivery because Balas lets you know stuff quickly and likes his drama. If you want to know something's up the night before, Balas is your guy. If you would rather not worry until lunch the next day when there's enough information to know the actual shape of what's up, you can do without. I can deal, Brian can't.

Nationally they're the new kids so they're hard to judge--really you have to comp them directly to 247 since that's the model they're copying. They have a good interface but are still pretty weak on scouting. The story there is they were founded by the same guy who founded Rivals and 247, but this time 247 was better at holding onto their most important scouting staff, so On3 has been leaning hard on the couple guys they do have. They are also more willing to hear out their staff so they make up some ground on 247 on reactivity, but that information can also be biased, like a pollster who averages lots of bad polls, whereas 247 is the pollster who conducts his own, excellent polls that are all held to the same standard, but not often enough to capture recent changes. This becomes a big feather in On3's cap when things are fluid, such as when fall video is just coming in. With 247 you get that info, but you have to dig it out of the insiders' articles.

One more big benefit to On3 over 247: They don't tag every damn article when a player is scheduling a visit, thinking of scheduling a visit, or naming schools he'd like to visit, so trying to do an information sweep on their site is SO MUCH EASIER than 247. Downside: you might miss stuff from insiders.

The NIL valuation thing is a gimmick to attract the players; no readers actually pay attention to it.

3. Rivals. Henschke is a Sam Webb acolyte and had to do a lot of the news stuff when Sam did insider stuff, so that's where Josh really stands out from the competition. He's been all over the Weiss story, for example, and was also #1 on the Mazi Smith one, because Josh has a stronger background in investigative journalism. 

The other major strength of M&BR is they're doing their own site-specific scouting of recruits. This used to be more common but as the industry streamlined this got cut. You'll note a generation of players whose recruiting profiles have only Magnus talking about what's on his tape until the section we do it. The MBR staff is very new at this so those evals are not very accurate yet, and you have to watch out for mistakes that every young scout makes like grading pad level on plays that made it in the reel for pancakes. But having *somebody* trying is way better than we've had.

Nationally Rivals has been gutted twice by their founder, and that's been a bad combination with their method of proprietary camps because more guys are skipping them and ending up with low 3-stars that only look bad for Rivals. Gorney and Friedman are spread way too thin right now, and because of it a lot of evals don't even get published, or they have someone dictating them.

4. ESPN. TomVH is a friend and this place alumni, and when he's on the job he's top-notch. Also they have Bill Connelly now, so that's worth the price of admission alone. Also you can combine your sub with Disney.

They don't do insider info.

Their recruiting coverage is just there to be there at this point. They don't put much effort into it, and they laughably overrate SEC prospects to pump up their own brand. I've taken to downgrading their input in my composite. They don't write up their evaluations so you have no idea why they think what they think. In many cases I think they're just copying the other sites' work, but occasionally they do look at a guy and offer a different opinion. Since they won't say what that opinion is, it's hard to judge it.