Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Questioning Win Homer's new star

I am suspicious of BC recruit Win Homer's bump from three star to four star on Rivals.com. Earlier this week, Rivals updated its Rivals 250 and the Virginia OL prospect debuted at 248. Previously Rivals gave Homer three stars, listed him as the 51st best tackle and the 12th best player out of Virginia. Even though he now has four stars plenty of players above him in his position ranking and in his state ranking still only carry three stars.


The three other major services, Scout, 247Sports and ESPN have not altered their rankings of Homer. Why was Homer bumped and why now? He hasn't played since the last ranking. He hasn't received any new offers that we know of. My suspicion is that a BC-friendly evaluator gave a BC-bound prospect a bump to help BC's overall ranking and offset some of the bad news on the recruiting front. In a potential quid pro quo, BC gets an artificial improvement to its class and the largest BC recruiting news site continues to keep a good relationship with Spaz and staff.


Let me state that I am not accusing all of Eagle Action (Rivals's BC site) of juicing the stats. In fact, I think Eric Hoffses is the best BC beat writer around. I also think Adam Rose is a rising star on the BC media scene. My long problem with Eagle Action has been with Mike Farrell and his willingness to color outside the lines when it comes to BC recruiting.


As I have always said, rankings really shouldn't matter. It is a subjective, man-made measurement. There may be a correlation with rankings and success, but I don't believe there is causation. BC's talent should be judged by how it does on the field. Who and how we bring in talent is important. What outsiders think of that talent is meaningless.


Homer may be the best member of this BC class. I hope Rivals collectively found something in his tapes or recruiting to make them think he will be a star. If they were throwing a bone to Spaz, then all they did was tease BC fans...again.



15 comments:

Andrew said...

Not sure this is fair to Win Homer, a kid who may have been pretty excited about this upgrade.

CT said...

There are BC-friendly evaluators? That must explain all of our highly rated recruiting classes. Saban/Miles, watch out!

Any guy with a name of 'Win Homer' should get an extra star just for putting up with a lifetime of jokes.

EL MIZ said...

lynch and grant are gone. daniels may not be eligible. but now homer has an arbitrary 4th star! things are looking up!

this has slick gene's fingerprints all over it.

blockparty said...

Juke the stats and majors become colonels.

mod34b said...

Poor judgment posting this ATL.

Tim said...

This is further evidence that these star rankings are a complete joke. The kid hasn't played a down of football in weeks (months?) but suddenly he's a significantly better prospect than he was last week? Nonsense.

On the other hand, I don't buy into ATL's conspiracy theory about Spaz/GDF being in bed with Rivals.

ATL_eagle said...

I am not trying to trash Homer. I don't think Gene is in bed with Rivals. I do think Mike Farrell throws Spaz a bone when he can and vice versa.

NEDofSavinHill said...

1. Three cheers for Lively and Sulzer for telling the truth. Shame on Dunn for his crass comments.One has to ask is Dunn well? Is he afflicted with sluggish schizophrenia? Should he be sent to Siberia? Why the hypersensitivity over legitimate criticism?
2.Is BC better off than they were 6 years ago? ESPN, using the Sagarin ratings, had BC as the 6th best program in the USA (combined football and b-ball) Today BC is #90 in football and #250 in b-ball making them the 170th best program. A slight drop of 164 places. This transformation is the result of Gdf replacing the winningest coaches in school history with less able people.
3. Lively raises an interesting question about race. Gdf knew that when the corrupt, incompetent Jimmy O was fired that he filed a lawsuit accusing BC of racism. Ryan at the Globe justified his claim but said JOB should have used the term "elitist", not racist. As if they were the same concept. Ryan ran a years-long negative campaign againt Skinner. Media types were urging BC athletes to transfer and prospects to not attend. Was this anti Skinner effort because they lost a source and a friend in the BC Athletic Department or was there another motive? Ryan exposed his true colors on local TV when he stated in reference to a black woman(Mrs. Kidd)"I'd like to smack her" When asked by Bob Liberl if he wanted to stand by that statement, Ryan said yes and repeated it. Follow this conduct up with the invented story by the Athletic Department that Skinner was "lazy" one sees a pattern emerge. Ted Sarandis denounced Ryan's smear as completely outrageous. 4. Knowing everything above why did Gdf hire the Fenway Group (owned by the Globe) to be BC's p. r. firm? Why did BC hire a firm with questionable bigots like Bob Ryan affiliated with it? 5. About 10 years ago Gdf told the press that he was trying to schedule Arizona St. in football because the TV people told him it would be a good TV matchup. It seems even then he was taking direction from Espn. He later tried to make Syracuse our rival. This must have been at the direction of Espn because the Orange has just engaged in a several years long villification program against BC. Syracuse as a rival would be an unnatural act considering their conduct. On conference expansion Gdf said "Espn told us what to do" Three seperate episodes showing he's taking directions from an outside party. Who side is he on? Where does his loyalty lie?

Knucklehead said...

Frank Taylor is the second coming of Chris Snee. He is focused and nasty. Someone should bump him up a level.

Not real confident in a Virgina prep school(non-military) football player. Very soft competition. Kind of like Lawrence Academy playing against some third rate prepschool who forefits because they dont want their players to get hurt(actually happended). I want o-linemen playing in Chestnut Hill who were brought up run blocking in cold windy weather

hardnose said...

The reason Homer's ranking doesn't fall into place is because the Rivals schedule is as follows
"rankings to be released next week. R100 Tuesday, R250 Wednesday, 4 stars outside 250 Thursday, position rankings Friday" - according to rivals, everything isn't adjusted yet but should be tomorrow.

The change in rankings are not arbitrary - rankings are always updated post all-star season - not just for BC recruits. And Homer did play a down of football - he competed at the Chesapeake Bowl - it's no Army Bowl, but it is all-stars from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West VA, VA, and Maryland. If you read the articles, you'll see that he was the best of all the linemen there. Rivals was actually there the whole week, assessing the kids in person.

Certainly, if Frank Taylor had been able to play ( he was injured) perhaps HE would have been the best lineman and gotten the star bump. If Jim Cashman had been there, perhaps HE would have gotten a bump. Who knows? Maybe they should ALL be 4-stars.

But do you really want to be so nasty to this kid jsut before signing day? ALL of the BC football blogs (Eagle Action, Eagle Outsider) all full of this, and you just might shake this kid up!

If you go back and read some articles, the digs about Homer were always that he was too small and that the competition wasn't good enough. Well, perhaps if UVA, VATECH, BC and UNC all offer a lineman when he weights 210, perhaps they saw some talent?

And you'd think that an All-Star game would have some better talent than perhaps what he played in his regular season? Some of the kids in the Chesapeake Bowl went on to play at the Under-Armour/Army games. You think the level of competition was okay?

Maybe he earned the 4th star and maybe we BC fans should be psyched about that.

Hey "knucklehead" - Read the articles - you'll see he's the #1-ranked lineman in the state of Virginia - that includes PUBLIC as well as private - and it also includes a couple of little schools called FUMA and HARGRAVE. And knucklehead, you're right again - he was not brought up "run blocking in cold windy weather." Maybe he should just stay put in Virginia with UVA or VATECH. Be careful what you wish for.

As ANDREW said, "not sure this is fair."

Sam said...

http://virginiapreps.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1313054 This a link to Rivals Best of the Best awards for the Chesepeake Bowl, an allstar game for players from virginia, Maryland, D.C, West Va, pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Deleware. Homer was named the best o-lineman on either team. It's one thing to question Homer's potential, but it's another thing to suggest that he hasn't done anything at all to earn his fourth star. This wasn't fair at all to post.

Knucklehead said...

You got it. He had the number one ranking in VA. Not impressed. Here is why.

You missed the point. He didn't play against the public schools and the military schools. Look at the schedule of the Christchurch School. They played very weak opponents in VA.

http://www.christchurchschool.org/teampages


Look at the rankings in VA, mostly public schools. Christchurch played none of them. Therefore he is not playing against the best and toughest talent in VA. If I am 6'5 250 and pancake a kid 5'9 180 every week that doesn't mean that I am going to be good at the next level. Although Win might be.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/highschools/all-met/statistics/football-rankings.html

Now look at the rankings in PA football Archbishop Wood is the #1 team in the state.
http://www.easternpafootball.com/

They play St. Joe's and Cardinal O'Hara in Phili. These are like BC High Playing Xaverian/ St. John's Prep.

Again for you hardnose. The point is 1) Generally speaking the ra nkings are wrong because they do not take into account the competition and overall talent level of the teams that the prospect plays against. 2) Specifically in this case Frank Taylor played for the best team in PA and against huge schools with a ton of talent. while Win Homer played for a Prep School who beat inferior talent. Look at the scores. If they were dominating teams that were good then they would ranked. They obviously arent.

Quit whining about Win Homers feelings. I bet he is a decent kid. He obviously likes BC and I have to respect him for that. It sounds like you think Win Homer cares about a person who grew up in boston went to BC has an MBA from Northeastern, who has nickname of Knucklehead, who posts(very cogent arguments however) on some blog. Imagine if he were an Alabama recruit he would get some seriuos scrutnity. Although I went pretty indepth so that you would understand my point.

It doen't matter what your response is to this. There is no reason that best offensive lineman on the best team in PA has fewer stars than Win Homer.

hardnose said...

But he got the 4th star after performing in the Chesapeake Bowl against high quality competition. He was pitted agains the best in the Mid-Atlantic.Why does this have to be a fight between Win HOmer and Frank Taylor - they're kids for crying out loud, and they'll be teammates.

okay, so this is about Frank Taylor deserving a 4th star. i'm not denying that. I'm sure he's a huge talent. I hope he is that great - wouldn't that be best for BC? Don't drag the other kid down in the meantime. Sorry.

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Unknown said...

He's probably the smartest kid on the football team, if not one of the smartest kids at the school. He put on 30 pounds of muscle, the right way. He has unusually quick feet and strength. His father is a coach. This kid is exceptional in every way. Some people are just winners. His name isn't Loser Homer