The Curse of the Unfinished Toolbox

When it comes to high school football, nothing says “can’t-miss” more than the five-star rating. Yes, five stars. It’s a label every red-blooded, pigskin player in America dreams of donning. Five stars mean your future has been written in ink, with a pen, not a pencil. Five stars says seat in the NFL Draft green room … whenever you’re ready to claim it. It means generational wealth, access to a life others could only dream of, with status and stardom. A five-star rating represents the promise of everything life between those white lines can offer and then some …

At least that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Since 2002 when the star ratings came into use, thousands have welcomed the five-star designation with some living up to the lofty billing. But for every Matthew Stafford, a five-star prospect in the class of 2006 and sure fire first ballot NFL Hall of Famer— there’s a Mitch Mustain, another five-star quarterback recruit whose college career never panned out, nor did he play a professional down.

So, what happened? Where did things go wrong? If the experts were so convinced of these talents would one day become household names in the NFL … why did they never progress past five stars?

Well, I’m so glad you asked…

The Curse of the Unfinished Toolbox 

Herbie Hancock was a piano prodigy, performing Mozart with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a child. He graced the stage with the likes of Miles, Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and a host of other jazz giants and as he did, one constant remained … he always worked on his toolbox. He never stopped practicing, thus allowing him to seamlessly move between sounds and genres. As such, regardless of the musical challenge set before him, Hancock always knew which note to hit, respecting the truth that his greatness wasn’t the gift: the gift was Hancock’s unending desire to expand his toolbox.

Five-star prospects can best be described as athletic prodigies. Everything comes easy to them and because it does, many miss the lesson Hancock embraced, the one that ushered in his greatness. The 6’2, 190-pound receiver with horsepower galore, the one who looks like he was built in a lab, relies on physical gifts, but never works to enhance them. He never focuses on the nuances of the game like catching the ball with his hands. He never spends time working on routes and as a result, his hips always dip at the wrong point in his route: a clear tip off to the defender that the route is ending. So, when he arrives on campus and looks across the line, looks into the proverbial mirror and sees a specimen equal to him, one who never stopped working to expand his toolbox … he stagnates, unsure of which note to hit …

And the gridiron music stops playing.

The Man-Child Dilemma

There’s one in every neighborhood, every city or town, and invariably, on every team. You see him coming before he arrives, standing head and shoulders above the crowd. Students whisper about his size, teachers wonder about his age, parents fear for the safety of their child while coaches salivate over his immense potential. Who is he? He … is the man-child, alive in the body of a man, doing things on the field a teen shouldn’t be capable of, easily occupying the rarified air of a five-star rating.

Courted by colleges from one coast to the next, he makes his choice, arrives on campus … and this is where the shift begins. No longer is he the biggest, the strongest, the immovable object, or unstoppable force. No, for the first time possibly ever, he’s facing players with physical attributes that far surpass his. And here’s the tricky part … some of them, in the not-so-distant past, were looking up to him.

Dominance no longer defines him and the authority his talent once commanded, his stars... all five of them, slowly begins to fade until he becomes a footnote, a cautionary tale, an afterthought. So much of his identity was built on being better during the early stages of his athletic journey. Once that phase ended, once others caught or passed him, he became a mystery to everyone … including himself.

Program Misalignment

The loss of identity isn’t the only phenomenon that can derail the career of a five-star prospect. In reality, every program isn’t for every player. It’s true, there are some talents that are transcendent, capable of flourishing regardless of the system or scheme they’re asked to fit into. But a much harsher truth is that college football, especially when it comes to recruiting, is a road paved by shiny things.

Shiny things like NIL deals, the latest and greatest uniforms, celebrity coaches and celebrity sidelines, brands, facilities, shoes … all alluring, gleaming, intoxicating … shiny things they are. And here’s what some prospects realize only after it’s too late: shiny things can attract, but they can also blind. Once the lights dim, and their eyes adjust, once they’re able to focus, they slowly see that the place they chose was never capable of supporting their dream.

The name that immediately comes to mind, the posterchild of right talent, wrong program if you will, is Justin Fields, the consensus #1 recruit in the class of 2018. Fields originally chose Georgia before transferring to Ohio State where he eventually became a first-round pick. The talent was always there; Fields just needed a change in scenery to step into his gifts and become the five-star prospect everyone touted him to be.

Maybe We Just Got It Wrong 

Raise your hand if you ever saw a guy play ball in high school and walked away thinking here’s no way he doesn’t make it to Sundays in the NFL.  You can’t see me but trust and believe, both my hands and feet are raised because I’ve missed my fair share and then some. Texas born and bred, a child of the Friday Night Lights, I’ve crisscrossed this football-crazed state of mine to watch can’t-miss prospects. I believed what I saw, swore they’d make it …

But I missed, or should I say, we missed.

Yeah, we missed because in most cases when I touted a talent as being five-star, recruiting services were doing and seeing the same things that caused me to gas up and drive to stadiums big and small, far and near to see what I thought was a special player. They used their analytics, timed and weighed, measured tangibles, and quantified intangibles but something went awry…

And … we still missed.

Last Word

Maybe five-star misses aren’t proof talent can be evaluated … maybe they’re proof that football, much as we love it, still refuses fit neatly inside our player evaluation box. Maybe the stars were never the problem. Maybe after all these years, players, games, reviews, and previews … maybe the hardest thing to evaluate …

…is our certainty.

That’s why football will always be a whisper that we may never be able to fully explain.

Further Reading: I Came As a Shadow: An Autobiography by John Thompson

If you want insights into how college athletics have evolved, this book is one you should pick up. This powerful book discusses the often-complicated relationship between college athletics, money, education and institutional power. It's a basketball memoir, but the lessons apply to any sport and while strategically exploring the reality that talent alone will only take an athlete so far.