The reason I love doing a weekly recruiting matchup — a look back at how OSU and its opponents’ starters were ranked as prospects — is to get a feel for how each team’s players were projected out of high school.
Many times you’ll see a four-star prospect stand among the rest, while other times, as is the case with OSU’s Taylor Cornelius, Britton Abbott and Landon Wolf, you’ll see former walk-ons who were unranked stand out as a starter.
I’ve come to learn that, while I still believe star rankings matter — (there’s a yuuuge difference between most three-star prospects and five-star prospects) — the system a team runs and the fit of the players within the system is of equal, or perhaps greater, importance.