Rivals/Scout Bias

M

midatlantech

Dodd-Like
Joined
Aug 20, 2003
Messages
6,787
Anyone notice just how biased the Rivals and Scout recruiting services are? From my standpoint Rivals is extremely biased toward the SEC. Scout's outlook seems to give the ACC a real chance of things but truthfully with the biggest Tech forum in Scout's Book, who's to say that they aren't equally biased.

Rivals has 7 SEC teams in the Top Ten nationally. They also have VPI ranked midway for the ACC. Tech is ranked third in the ACC and well behind UGA.

Scout has VPI ranked second in the ACC and has Tech ranked well ahead of UGA.

I just can't help but notice how Rivals likely helps recruiting for the SEC in the se. But I think ESPN used Scout's service last night so Tech was shown ranked highly and that doesn't hurt us either.
 
midatlantech said:
Anyone notice just how biased the Rivals and Scout recruiting services are? From my standpoint Rivals is extremely biased toward the SEC. Scout's outlook seems to give the ACC a real chance of things but truthfully with the biggest Tech forum in Scout's Book, who's to say that they aren't equally biased.

Rivals has 7 SEC teams in the Top Ten nationally. They also have VPI ranked midway for the ACC. Tech is ranked third in the ACC and well behind UGA.

Scout has VPI ranked second in the ACC and has Tech ranked well ahead of UGA.

I just can't help but notice how Rivals likely helps recruiting for the SEC in the se. But I think ESPN used Scout's service last night so Tech was shown ranked highly and that doesn't hurt us either.
Click to expand...
I wonder if there's any coorelation between the rankings and the number of memberships (by conf or by team)? ;)
 
I wonder if there's any coorelation between the rankings and the number of memberships (by conf or by team)?
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure someone on the Hive did an analysis, and determined that it did.

*I* wonder if our recent increase in four star recruits correlates with increased revenues from GT supporters.
 
well, they are businesses, and like any business, you're there to make money. you cater to where most of your business comes from, but you have to balance this with credibility.
 
midatlantech said:
Anyone notice just how biased the Rivals and Scout recruiting services are? From my standpoint Rivals is extremely biased toward the SEC. Scout's outlook seems to give the ACC a real chance of things but truthfully with the biggest Tech forum in Scout's Book, who's to say that they aren't equally biased.

Rivals has 7 SEC teams in the Top Ten nationally. They also have VPI ranked midway for the ACC. Tech is ranked third in the ACC and well behind UGA.

Scout has VPI ranked second in the ACC and has Tech ranked well ahead of UGA.

I just can't help but notice how Rivals likely helps recruiting for the SEC in the se. But I think ESPN used Scout's service last night so Tech was shown ranked highly and that doesn't hurt us either.
Click to expand...

I don't care about rankings on services...I have not even looked at them and will not look at them.
All I care about is database quality and update regularity. Rivals, imho, does a much better job of maintaining the dbase and already has twice as many GT offers discovered and twice as many kids in the dbase involved with GT comparitive to Scout.
Scout has a much better message board as it bought The Hive....although the Rivals Premium board has little clutter but diamonds for information. Of course all information ends up all over every board within one hour of hitting one.
 
hiveredtech said:
Rivals, imho, does a much better job of maintaining the dbase and already has twice as many GT offers discovered and twice as many kids in the dbase involved with GT comparitive to Scout.
Click to expand...

Yesterday morning, Geoff said we have "about 10 offers out - about the same as last year."

I believe that is closer to Scout's number.

With that said, no one outside the program knows where those ships are offered. Self-reported offers are inflated, particularly this time of year.

I try to stay out of the Rivals versus Scout rivalry (pardon the pun). They both do a pretty good job, and it would be dangerous to overrely on either one. They also have different sources. I also like free enterprise competition to keep them both motivated to do the best job they can.

The correlation between rankings and membership is real. I won't accuse them of rigging the results without specific information. I will say that individuals gravitate towards good news. I'll also say that there's a temptation for a scouting service to allocate limited resources towards looking closer to athletes pursued by teams with large subscriber bases than others.
 
Interesting thread.

On another sports board, we had an LSU fan posting that the CEO of Rivals, Shannon Terry, was an Alabama supporter and that Rivals had actually bumped a couple of recruits from 0 stars to 3 and 4, respectively, after they committed to the Tide. Of course, Scout had been showing one of them as a 3 star all along, but it didn't keep the LSU faithful from complaining.
 
Techbert said:
Yesterday morning, Geoff said we have "about 10 offers out - about the same as last year."

I believe that is closer to Scout's number.

With that said, no one outside the program knows where those ships are offered. Self-reported offers are inflated, particularly this time of year.

I try to stay out of the Rivals versus Scout rivalry (pardon the pun). They both do a pretty good job, and it would be dangerous to overrely on either one. They also have different sources. I also like free enterprise competition to keep them both motivated to do the best job they can.

The correlation between rankings and membership is real. I won't accuse them of rigging the results without specific information. I will say that individuals gravitate towards good news. I'll also say that there's a temptation for a scouting service to allocate limited resources towards looking closer to athletes pursued by teams with large subscriber bases than others.
Click to expand...

Rivals shows 11 I believe...Geoff was speaking in round numbers.

But you cannot argue that Scout has a better database...because they do not. They have half the players and data.

I use both.
 
the thing i find most interesting is, since the hive became part of scout, the stars greatly increased for tech recruits.
 
Or since Chan's lowly ranked classes have done pretty well on the field, then the stars rankings have gone up too.
 
atlanta jacket said:
the thing i find most interesting is, since the hive became part of scout, the stars greatly increased for tech recruits.
Click to expand...

I don't know if I buy that. We had some highly ranked recruiting classes before 02, when the Hive transitioned. If anything, we took a dip after the Hive went to the dark side.
 
midatlantech said:
Or since Chan's lowly ranked classes have done pretty well on the field, then the stars rankings have gone up too.
Click to expand...
The guys we signed this year had other I-A offers. Gailey didn't recruit the same guys this year that he did in the past, so that argument is garbage.
 
The guys we signed this year had other I-A offers. Gailey didn't recruit the same guys this year that he did in the past, so that argument is garbage.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't call it garbage. There are plenty of guys in classes of yore that Chan won over other good football schools, but in days of yore, they'd be downgraded as soon as they comitted to Tech. We actually had some guys upgraded after they comitted, this year.
 
How about some examples? You can count the guys with other BCS offers from last year on one hand.
 
Knox, the rankings are extremely subjective. If I was evaluating 1000 athletes and I didn't quite know that much about a kid and was on the fence about a score, I'd give the kid a higher score based on if the Bigs were offering, no doubt. But I'd also give the higher score for coaches recruits that clearly see talent better than others, like Chan and the VPI coach.
 
The fact of the matter is the rankings didn't change. The players we targeted did.
 
How about some examples? You can count the guys with other BCS offers from last year on one hand.
Click to expand...

It's hard to tell from the insiders database who had offers and who didn't, in retrospect, because schools pull their "offer" once a recruit commits. Many of them from previous years showing as having 'no offer' in their database actually had offers at the time.
 
knoxjacket said:
The fact of the matter is the rankings didn't change. The players we targeted did.
Click to expand...
Couldn't agree more knox. The difference this year is the fact that we have a recruiting coordinator who can sell GT.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top