A lot of people say it’s a waste of time to follow college recruiting.

I, for one, disagree.

Okay, you can say that Notre Dame has recruited well these last few years but they don’t have anything to show for it.  The Irish definitely have had several top recruits not pan out.  However, if you really want to look at the reason the classes didn’t pan out, the Irish’s recruiting strength was on offense because Charlie Weis is an offensive genius.  Defensively, when you have a national reputation for being less than stellar, most of the top blue-chippers on the defensive side of the ball will go to a place that has a better track record of defensive development for the NFL – places like Florida, Ohio State, Texas, etc.

Seriously, if you look every year at the rankings of who supposedly recruited well, you get a who’s who of who’s actually done really well.  Florida State would probably be the team that joins Notre Dame as the yearly disappointment as far as turning potential into true star power.

But this year, you see USC, Florida and Texas ranked 1-2-3 by rivals.com.  Alabama’s fifth.  Guess what?  Those teams have been contending for the national title for the last several years.  Alabama and Florida are close to being dynasties.  Texas has been the cream of the powerful Big 12 for most of the last five years.

The point I’m getting to is that it’s about playing the percentages.  According to Rivals.com, Texas has two 5-star and 19 4-star recruits in this year’s football class.   I have no doubt that there’ll be a fair share of busts in that group, but there’ll also be some amazing athletes in that group with a future playing on NFL Sundays.  Meanwhile, Toledo has one 4-star recruit and a 4-star transfer coming in.  Now for the MAC, Toledo had an OUTSTANDING and AMAZING class.  I’m excited to see what these Rockets can do.

But it’d be unfair to expect Tim Beckman to coach Toledo to Longhorn standards over these next 3 years or so.

Conversely, if you compare Toledo’s class of two 4-star guys and 13 3-star guys (again, according to rivals.com) to Central Michigan’s three 3-star guys and zippo 4-star guys, then as a Rocket fan, you have to be excited about what’s on the horizon, as far as MAC play and getting to that all-important bowl game.

Again, like Texas, not all of Toledo’s recruits will pan out for whatever reason.  But play the percentages – some of these guys will be really good.  Some of the lower-rated guys will turn out to be studs too.  Meanwhile, CMU’s hoping that their collection of 2-star talent will blossom into much more than what Toledo’s 4- and 3-star projected guys, along with the Rockets’ 2-star guys, can eventually do down the road.

So while every coach around the nation, including Beckman, scoffs at the rankings, I’ll tell you this much – there was a never-before-seen buzz at the Toledo national signing day press conference.  To see previous signees of Auburn and Tennessee come here, and another guy transfer over from Illinois (all are BCS schools, mind you) says something about what Beckman and his staff were able to sell them about Toledo’s football future.  The new Fetterman Training Center and other facilities within the Glass Bowl and Savage Arena no doubt helped, along with I’m guessing that win over Colorado.

Of course, I’ll admit that in the end, it’s about the coaching.  The different collegiate coaching staffs are the ones in charge of transforming these young prep stars into young men.

But it’s definitely okay to be excited right now if your team’s ranked pretty highly by recruiting sites such as Rivals.com or Scout.com.  History has shown that most of the upper-tier teams do indeed succeed like originally expected when all is said and done.