Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron had some sharp, albeit not altogether accurate, words for the national recruiting services that assess high school prospects each year. In an interview with CBS Sports Radio's Jim Rome, McCarron was critical of recruiting experts, suggesting that some perhaps don't have the experience necessary for the job.
"I think that's one of the things that is wrong with recruiting out of high school," McCarron said. "You have guys who have never played the game of football rating these guys that they are a 5-star, because they're sitting behind a computer screen watching their highlight film. Well, their highlight film is supposed to be good, the last time I checked."
Recruiting services commonly deploy evaluators to see plenty of the nation's top prospects play in person. And in some cases, those evaluators have indeed played in college or, perhaps, gained work experience on the recruiting side of the college football business. The opinions of college coaches also influence rankings. After all, when was the last time a recruit wanted by the nation's top programs was not highly rated? Answer: Pretty much never.
By contrast, players with a limited number of scholarship offers to smaller schools don't ever find themselves at the top of recruiting rankings, either.
McCarron was dead-on, however, with the notion that the elite prospects tend to enter college with the idea that they are too good to ride the bench.
"That's the kind of thing that ticks me off about recruiting and when these kids come in and they're 5-stars and they expect to play right off the bat," he said. "It's a little entitlement and when they don't play off the bat, they get a little ticked off and they don't want to work."
The train, however, shows no sign of slowing down. National signing day is Wednesday, and Alabama is expected to sign the nation's No. 1-ranked class.
Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter @ChaseGoodbread.
