If you were to go back and review the projections for last year's All-Americans when they were but mere recruits, you'll probably notice something interesting: The rankings seem virtually random. As many of the nation's top players were rated two or three-star mediocrities out of high school as were rated four-star mustangs, and more lower-rated prospects are on the All-America teams than former five-stars. Of the 79 different players (excluding kickers and punters) were voted in some capacity to one of the five NCAA-recognized All-America teams last year, only 13 came into college as five-stars, the cream of the crop. By contrast, more than three times as many of those All-Americans -- 43, to be exact, more than half of the total -- were rated three stars or lower. The top three or four recruiting teams in the country usuallydo better than thatbring in stronger hauls than that, according to the gurus.

If you didn't know any better, you'd think those recruiting stars didn't correspond to future success at all, a theme you might become familiar with over the next week or so.

Fortunately, we do know better. If you look more closely, there's a very good reason for the distribution, beginning with the distribution of stars at the beginning of the process, according to Rivals' database of signees to I-A schools over the last five years:

I would hope that two and three-star players could acquit themselves well enough to produce a large number of stars, since they account for almost 90 percent of the players nationally. Again, using the rosters of the five NCAA-recognized All-America teams -- as voted by the AFCA, the Associated Press the Football Writers of America, the Sporting News and the Walter Camp Foundation -- the situation changes dramatically when you look at the All-America numbers in light of those ratios:

Maybe a raw ratio of 1 in 14 -- or even 1 in 12, or 1 in 10, or whatever it is after accounting for the early departures, injuries and academics that these numbers make no attempt to reflect -- isn't all that impressive; after all, that means far more elite recruits are falling short of their star-studded birthright than are reaching it. Still, if you look at those odds ...

... it must be very tough to go on portraying them as a crapshoot.