re: How meaningful are STARS? Player evaluations

I just use the sites and their rankings as a reference. I tend to do my own evals and use their rankings and reports as a way to gather more info on the kids. Imo the rankings are only important to fans for the most part and as a fan the key for me is to be happy with the kids we get. I can be happy with kids even if the sites don't like them. Same way I can not be high on a 5* according to some site.

I'll never fully believe in a system that can predict how many 5*(usually 25 give or take a couple) and 4*(usually 300-350) kids their will be in a given year and then at the same time claim that some years are down and some are up. Common sense and reality tells me that there has to be a year where only 15 or so kids are 5* or only 250 or so are 4*. On the flipside there has to be a year every now and then where there are maybe 40 or so 5* and maybe 400 4* kids. There's no way the numbers are consistently the same(within reason) every year in something as unpredictable as how much talent there is across the country. Either some kids are getting a little extra bump every year or some kids are getting shafted every year.

Imo the best thing to do is determine for yourself how good you personally think a kid is and go with that. Frankly, if we as individuals are happy with a particular guy, does it matter what some perceived expert thinks? Not to me and from reading and posting on this board daily, a lot of others don't really care either. Everyone has their own opinion of how good(or bad) a player is. I prefer it that way.