Covering college football as I do takes 52 weeks a year as it is and while I personally do not scout the high school games and rate each player I do compile my rankings based on the many different recruiting services across the country that follow and scout HS football year round. I not only like to use all of the biggest and best services, but I also use regional reports as well. The colleges themselves use many of these services to get the latest information on recruits.
One very important part of my College Football Preview Magazine is an individual player’s “PS#”. You will see them on almost every page and I find them vital in my analysis of a team.  A simple definition for a PS# is my ranking of the players at their positions coming out of high school.

When I receive a recruiting magazine, I translate each player’s ranking into a point system from 1-100.  Each and every player is then logged into the computer and give them a point total from each source. This is a very time-consuming process. Many players are listed by just one or two sources. The higher ranked recruits are mentioned by almost every source. The more they are mentioned and the higher they are rated in each publication, the more total points they accrue. After months of entering all of this information, I sort the list by each position and by total points. Naturally, the QB with the most total points then becomes PS#1QB for that year. If a player is PS#99QB, that means he ranks 99th in total points of all QB’s coming out of high school that year.

Before I wrap this article up, I would like to go over a couple of commonly used abbreviations that are used. Now you know just what a PS# is. Naturally, the PS stands for Phil Steele, or my rating for the players out of high school. I also use HT often. HT is a Highly Touted athlete. In the past this has been a player who ranks in the Top 100 at his position out of high school. With 50 states that comes out to be about 2 players per state at each position. A VHT (Very Highly Touted) is a player rated among the Top 20 out of HS.

I have changed the HT and VHT guidelines in the past couple of years. At K, the ratings drop to Top 10 for VHT and Top 35 for HT. At TE it is Top 15 for VHT and Top 75 for HT. QB is Top 30 for VHT and Top 100 for HT. WR and RB have two spots on most teams, therefore, the HT number is up to #150 and the VHT is up to #50. Most teams play 3 or 4 LB’s so that number moves to #200 for HT classification and #60 for VHT. The DL’s and DB’s generally have 4 players on the field. The HT classification is now up to #250 at those positions, while a VHT is among the Top 60 out of HS at their unit as a whole. The offensive line, which has 5 spots, is also up to #250 as an HT and up to #100 for a VHT. Many recruiting publications do not distinguish between OL and DL for their lineman. As a general rule, we put them into the OL category so that position has, by far, the largest amount of players.

Also new last year in my College Football Preview on every Top Newcomers list is the number of VHT’s and HT’s that each team brings in this year. For example, Texas signed the most number of VHT’s (22) and HT’s (6) combined with 28 while Ohio St (20) and Alabama (19) also led the way in VHT signings. This is also a nice quick way to compare how your favorite team did in the recruiting wars vs other conf foes. For example, Arkansas St signed 3 VHT players while the rest of the Sun Belt only brought in 4 other VHT players combined!

Who signed the most number of VHT’s?

(keep in mind these lists are taken from the newcomer lists which would include greyshirts, jucos, and transfers that can play immediately)

VHT's By Conference

As you can see here to no surprise the SEC signed by far the most number of VHT's per team with an amazing 10.1!! What was also surprising was that the Sun Belt and CUSA both signed more VHT's than the MW who just a few years ago wanted to be among the BCS conferences as far as the bowls go.