For many college football fans, the first Wednesday in February ranks right up there with Christmas and New Year’s on the holiday scale.
That’s because it’s National Signing Day, when thousands of high school stars around the nation make their choices known. Or as the ad for a day-long show on one cable network breathlessly screams, “Watch the top programs stock up on fresh talent!”
All true, but all misleading. Recruiting is an inexact science, mainly because it’s all projection with no guarantees that they’ll actually pan out.
Guess right often enough and your school might win a title.
Guess wrong more than you should – often for reasons you couldn’t control, like injuries or grades – and you might be looking for work a year from now. 
Which is why you shouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in all those recruiting analysts who seem to grade the same schools in the top 10 every year. The only thing that seems to be different is the order.
Sure, it’s nice to get those “five-star” recruits, but it’s also nice if you can have coaches who can draw that talent out of them once they get there.
Just look at Tennessee since its national championship of 1998. The Volunteers usually recruit well, thanks to the tireless work of coach Phillip Fulmer. Recruiting is his calling card and few coaches in the nation do it better.
Yet what have all those four and five-star guys gotten UT since 1998? Three Southeastern Conference championship game appearances, all of which the Vols have lost, and exactly zero Bowl Championship Series wins.
On the other hand, Virginia Tech rarely gets into anyone’s top 10 in recruiting. More often than not, the Hokies finish between 21 and 25 nationally.
But Frank Beamer’s coaching staff gets the most out of their players. While playing in weaker leagues like the Big East and the ACC has helped, Tech has won three conference titles and played for a national title in the last nine years.
What’s more, you can argue the Hokies’ most disappointing season in that span – 2003 – came with their most-hyped recruiting class playing the key roles. That year, Tech started 6-0 and was ranked third before careening to an 8-5 finish.
Obviously, if you give coaches their choice between the five-star players or three-star guys, they’ll go for the five-star guys every time.
But there is a caveat here – just because you haul in four five-star guys and seven four-star guys doesn’t mean you’ll be playing for a national title in three years.
It helps to be able to coach them some, too.