Recruiting publications don’t have the expertise to individually evaluate all of the high school players around the country, nor do they have the resources to actually travel the country, attend games, view the players and make an assessment on their own. Instead they rely on the information that is provided to them from of a handful of actual recruiters from the big time programs.

Think about it, if Scout, Rivals, Street and Smith or any of the other publications manages to strike up a relationship with an assistant coach at USC for example, and they ask him for his assessment of the best players in that part of the country, what do you think they are going to hear? Naturally all of the players that have been contacted and expressed a strong interest in USC are “All-world” while those kids that aren’t interested or that USC doesn’t want or need, are “very average.”

That is why the same big time programs (Notre Dame for example) will always be listed in the top ten for recruiting, even though their “big time” recruits often turn out to be busts. It also explains why a kid can suddenly drop from 4 stars to 3 after committing to BYU, or another “lesser programs.”