Grading UCF Football's 2011 Recruiting Class Five Years Later

I hate National Signing Day.

That's not to say there aren't good things about Signing Day. I've covered it from both ends - the colleges (at UCF and the University of Georgia) and the high schools (in northeast Georgia). It's good that the kids get their day in the sun to celebrate going to college - most of them to smaller schools where you'll never hear from them again as they get their degree. That's never a bad thing.

It's the press conferences. The hats. The commitments and then the flips and then the flips again. The jersey-wearing fans standing outside the program's offices awaiting faxes (faxes!) from high school kids. The other jersey-wearing fans tweeting expletives at high school kids because they didn't choose their school. The "best class in school history" B.S.

And you know who agrees with me? Scott Frost:

But the biggest fraud of all is national recruiting rankings. These are largely arbitrary rankings of schools based on largely arbitrary rankings of players that do nothing but sell web and magazine subscriptions. Again, that's not to say that the work reporters do on the recruiting trail is good - Brandon Helwig and those like him bust their asses every day to such an extent that I question whether or not they follow the established rules of space-time, and they don't nearly make as much money doing it as they deserve (or as much as you think, either). But the system hovering above them at places like Rivals, Scout and 247 are selling a product that doesn't exist: instant football success through recruiting.

After all, how many national titles has Notre Dame won in the last 15 years thanks to their consistently top-20-ranked recruiting?

Recruiting is the lifeblood of all college sports. Any coach worth his salt will tell you that, and it's correct. But the only way to evaluate a recruiting class is after those recruits have finished school.

So look, I'm not doing anything about this year's class. If you want that, go here and knock yourself out. If you want visual confirmation that these kids actually played football, here it is:

Alright, enough of that.

I propose in this piece to do something that, to my knowledge, no one has done yet, and that is evaluate UCF's 2011 recruiting class. I'm even going to use a star system:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Star player and bona-fide NFL Draft talent. Need not have stayed all four years.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ - All-conference-level or solid starter, possible NFL late draftee or UFA.

⭐⭐⭐ - Played and finished career at UCF, graduated (or at least should have). Not NFL talent.

⭐⭐ - Played but didn't finish. Transferred, left football, or something like that.

⭐ - Never played, probably on a milk carton somewhere.

So, without further adieu, here's a revised look back at UCF's 2011 recruiting class, five years on:

Some notes on this:

• Breshad Perriman. Two stars. LOL.
• Rannell Hall was really good.
• 17 of the 29 players in this recruitingclass never panned out.
• Nine out-played their recruiting rankings.

So the next time you talk about recruiting, remember that the results are out there.