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.

Last year I re-did many of my guidelines for qualifying as a VHT/HT at several positions. In the past WR and RB have had two spots on most teams, therefore, the HT number was #150 and the VHT was #50. However, with more and more teams going to spread offenses with 3-WR sets and just one RB, I changed my requirements. RB’s were downgraded to #40 for a VHT and #125 for an HT while WR’s were upgraded to #60 for a VHT and #150 for a HT. On the defensive side of the ball, I thought my numbers were a little light at all 3 positions so I upgraded DL, LB and DB from #60 to #75 for VHT classification while DL/DB have an HT classification of #250 and LB’s #200. The offensive line, which has 5 spots, is also up to #250 as an HT and up to #100 for a VHT.

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, Georgia signed the most number of VHT’s (25). This is also a nice quick way to compare how your favorite team did in the recruiting wars vs other conference foes. Back in the 1970’s the Big 10 was referred to as the Big 2 and the Little 8 as Michigan and Ohio St dominated the conference. This past year the Wolverines and Buckeyes combined to sign 33 VHT’s while the other 12 schools in the conference signed a total of 55 VHT players combined! Could we be in store for similar run in the near future?

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 the SEC clearly signed the best classes in 2014 while the other four power conferences were relatively close with one another.