Since we are entering recruiting season...heck, it's always recruiting season

We have no WAC news, links, etc for you today so far so we figured it was time to roll out another 'beware' post regarding recruiting and the various on-line services and rankings of players.

PTW has nothing against any of these sites, in fact, we subscribe to one of them. The information they provide can be very useful and, more importantly, accurate. It can also be woefully outdated and once in a while presented with a thumb of the scale so to speak. What also needs to be kept in mind that some evaluations may be based on a one-time viewing and the player in mind could have had the best/worst showing ever in that particular setting.

College coaches do not utilize these services. Actually, let's amend that previous statement: some college coaches may become aware of a certain player due to an article being posted but none put faith into any sort of descriptions within the piece. They may become intrigued enough to want to learn more and possibly take a look themselves but that's about the extent.

What is important to be aware of is the list of schools of interest/interested in Player X -- interest is defined by the beholder as it could be a questionnaire sent out, a letter expressing interest, a call to a club team or high school coach, an unpaid-for or paid-for recruiting trip to the college, all the way to an actual offer being extended.

That's because the problem is once an article appears, any schools that are mentioned in conjunction with someone are then entered into that player's site profile. Sometimes forever.

It doesn't matter if a player has narrowed/expanded his list or a school has moved on -- changes are rare, at least on site profiles.

So 'your' school may have been interested in Player X in June of 2009 or January 2010 but one or both parties decided to pursue other options. However, nothing will change in the profile until another article is done with a more current listing of the priorities of Player X or School Y -- and even then it's not necessarily a guarantee the player profile/school's preferred recruiting targets will be system updated. It seems those profiles of major recruits are updated much more so than those of mid or low major level players.

Plus, any ranking (say #89) assigned to a recruit is at the very least questionable but especially so for the mid and low major prospects. They are seen much less and usually evaluated by someone other than the Dave Telep's, the Eric Bossi's and the like..

Additionally, we are aware of rankings affected and articles written by those closely connected to certain players and. well, objectivity has been cast aside in order to falsely pump up a prospect's ceiling.This may not be practiced a great deal but it unfortunately still occurs.

The bottomline is enjoy whatever you come across in the recruiting realm but remain aware that some gold is the real thing while the other tarnishes quickly.