The two big lies about recruiting rankings and the Transfer Portal

It's always the sensational that gets everybody's attention. Quarterback Darian Mensah transferred from Tulane to Duke last December and the Blue Devils paid him a reported $8 million for two years.

The three-star 6-3, 205-pound sophomore from San Luis Obispo threw for 3.646 yards and 30 touchdowns while piloting his new team to a shocking 27-20 overtime win over Virginia in the ACC Championship, an upset that sent the College Football Playoff bracket into a tizzy, altering the fates of James Madison, Notre Dame and BYU.

By Duke standards, Mensah was a mild portal success, but there are more catastrophes than triumphs. The unvarnished truth is that 41 percent of FBS transfers don't find another scholarship or NIL deal at an FBS school. In 2022, the last year for which the NCAA made data available, over 2500 entered the portal, and nearly half of the players in the portal wind up at a lower division school or out of football.

Much like the PGA Tour or the NBA, it's headline-grabbing money at the top, scrambling to keep in the game for the majority of the athletes.

The second big lie in the college football business comes from recruiting rankings. Rivals, 247Sports and On3 were all founded by the same guy, Shannon Terry, who sold 247 to CBS and currently owns Rivals and On3, which he has merged into one giant entity.

The sites, while interesting and entertaining as they track the journeys of nation's most talented prospects, don't actually scout and evaluate football players. What they principally do is track offers. A player with offers from Ohio State, Texas, Alabama, Oregon and Miami gets a ratings boost.

Recruiting rankings boiled down: They want him, so he must be good

When Ryder Lyons committed to BYU over Oregon, he dropped from five stars to four. When Bryson Beaver flipped from Boise State to the Ducks, picking up offers from Alabama and Ole Miss as his recruiting heated up, he jumped almost overnight from three stars to four.

This isn't to say that Lyons and Beaver aren't good football players. They are the same guys they were before Rivals, On3 and 247 changed their ratings.

What the services do is track offers, interests and visits. A few of the experts like Max Torres of On3 go to games and clinics and do real evaluations, but most of the rest of it is a Hype-Meter.

What sets Oregon apart in both the portal market and in high school recruiting is that Dan Lanning and his staff do their own careful, culture-centered evaluations. They look for traits and abilities that fit program needs, an approach that allows them to focus on high-upside portal acquisitions like Malik Benson, Emmanuel Pregnon, Bear Alexander and Dillon Thieneman, high-motor, high-effort, high-character recruits like Xavier Lherisse, Davon Benjamin, Jett Washington and Messiah Hampton.

Oregon consistently outperforms the market in both transfer portal and high school recruiting because they start with the film and the player, not some hot board on a website.

The third big lie about recruiting is the presumption that "rankings don't matter." Invariably when the subject comes up, some fan will say something like "Jeff Maehl was a three-star. Jurrion Dickey was a five-star and a bust" or "Marcus Mariota was a three-star." In fact, seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady was a three-star or the equivalent in 1996.

The fallacy here involves outliers and the law of large numbers. About 250,000 high school seniors play football. Of these, 30 to 40 are five-stars on one service or another, 300-400 get a four-star rating and some 1500 reach three-star status, leaving nearly 248,000 unrated, a figure that doesn't include Australian punters and West German defensive tackles.

Maehl was one of a quarter million. Dakorien Moore is one of 40. Around 65% of NFL first-round draft picks were four- and five-star recruits, the guys who were bigger, stronger and faster by the time they finished high school.