Don't be star-struck by recruiting rankings

While the national recruiting services weren’t particularly impressed with Virginia’s 2010 class, coach Mike London begged to differ.

Generally, the Cavaliers’ 17-man class was rated as 10th-best out of the 12 ACC schools, and Rivals.com — perhaps the most well-recognized of all those recruiting services — ranked Virginia’s class as No. 66 nationally.

On paper, the class isn’t very sexy. There’s only one four-star (out of five) player, Fork Union Military Academy lineman Morgan Moses, who signed but still has not qualified academically for admission. A bunch of three-stars dot the signing day list.

While Moses is the highest-rated recruit in UVa’s class, the most spectacular is Salisbury, N.C., running back Kevin Parks, who London raves about.

“He’s like a Weeble,” London said. “You can knock him down, but he just pops right back up. He just goes and goes and goes. He has a low center of gravity. He can make a play that looks like two yards go 22 yards or go 52 yards. You get him behind those big linemen and let him run. He’s 5-foot-8 1/2 on his tippy toes, but he plays like a giant.”

It brings to mind something that Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe told me after his Deacons won the ACC championship a couple of years ago after several unheralded recruiting classes.

Grobe said that in a preseason meeting he asked all the 5-star recruits in the room to raise their hands.

None went up.

Then he asked for all the 4-stars to raise their hands. Still no hands.

Three stars? A few.

Grobe, who prefers to redshirt the majority of his recruiting classes and let them mature, takes advantage of their abilities by the time they are juniors, seniors and fifth-year players.

London, who has coached on both sides of the football at the FCS and FBS levels, can relate to Grobe’s circumstance. However, it remains to be seen whether he will have the luxury of redshirting most of this class. He inherited a team with back-to-back losing seasons and limited talent on hand.

The new Virginia coach said during his signing day press conference Wednesday that his philosophy is to try to redshirt linemen because of the physical nature of their positions. However, if a skilled player is ready to play, can grasp the concept of his position and is as good or better than the starter or the backup, then he’ll play him.

Back to the rankings. London said that in this age of the Internet and myriad recruiting services and various rankings, that he still trusts his eye for talent over reports.

“When [a player] is rated a particular star, the people that are rating them ... I know they take pride in what they do, but I like to go out and watch film and watch a guy play a position and see how he competes against other players,” London explained. “If you can check off on the boxes, the things he can do for your team, the skills that you require, then that’s all that matters.

“I know there’s a lot of players out there that have outstanding qualities and skills that people that are ranking class and players would assign stars to them, but one man’s five-star is another man’s one-star,” London said. “I think it has to fit the mold of who you are recruiting and in this case, I like who we have.”

London said he is also excited about the progress he and his new staff have made around the state and elsewhere toward the 2011 class, which will give him the opportunity to pursue the type of players that will best fit his system and football philosophy.

Having recruited the Commonwealth for his alma mater, Richmond, for William & Mary, for UVa on three occasions now and even for Boston College (this was his recruiting territory), he has built up an abundance of long-time relationships with the high school coaches in this state. The fact that he has added Shawn Moore, automatically enhances UVa’s recruiting presence in the metropolitan Washington area.

The message that London and his staff have delivered around this state is that Virginia wants to build stronger relationships.

“If the door was cracked, we opened it a little further,” London said of spreading that message personally around the state’s high schools. “If it was closed, hopefully we cracked it, and if it was already open, then hopefully it will be wide open for us to come in there.”

London said that he and his staff haven’t been to every school in the state yet because he has been incredibly busy in the less than two months he’s been on the job, but that it is a goal to have had someone from the staff in every state high school by the end of spring recruiting.