"Don't let me down. Don't let me down." - The Beatles.



Is there anything that causes more hand-wringing than the wins and losses of December, January and February?

No, I'm not talking about the bowl games. And I'm not talking about college basketball, either.

I'm talking about the "hot stove league" of college athletics - football recruiting.

But while more and more fans get more and more hung up on recruiting every year, a lot of folks still wonder if recruiting isn't taken way too seriously.

In fact, back in October I was asked by a reader of my govolsxtra.com blog to compare recent recruiting rankings with this year's initial Bowl Championship Series rankings. Now that the BCS rankings are final, I've decided to do an "end of the year" breakdown.

I went back and used several recruiting services to score the top 10 recruiting classes for each of the previous five years (signing day 2001 through signing day 2005). I included the rankings of Super Prep and Tom Lemming, among others.

Over the past five years, the big winners in the recruiting wars were Southern Cal, Michigan, LSU, Oklahoma, Florida State, Miami, Tennessee, Texas, Florida and Ohio State. Those teams had the best five-year runs.

What did those great classes do on the field?

"You're everything I hoped for. You're everything I need." - Joe Cocker.

Several teams turned their top notch recruiting classes into top-notch results. They were Southern Cal (No. 1 recruiting, No. 1 BCS), Miami (No. 6 recruiting, No. 8 BCS), Texas (No. 8 recruiting, No. 2 BCS), and Ohio State (No. 10 recruiting, No. 4BCS).

Lots were over-achievers. Teams like Penn State (No. 3 BCS), Oregon (No. 5 BCS), Auburn (No. 9 BCS), West Virginia (No. 11 BCS), Alabama (No. 13 BCS), TCU (No. 14 BCS), and Texas Tech (No. 15 BCS) didn't even rank in the top 20 of recruiting (for the span of 2001-05) according to the combined recruiting rankings.

Other BCS-ranked teams that didn't have highly ranked recruiting classes include Northwestern, Louisville, Wisconsin, Georgia Tech and Boston College.

And then there's the other end of the spectrum.

"And anyone can tell, you think you know me well. Well, you don't know me." - Ray Charles.

Teams that didn't quite live up to the recruiting gurus' expectations: Michigan (No. 2 recruiting, No. 20 BCS), Oklahoma (No. 4 recruiting, No. 23 BCS), Florida State (No. 5 recruiting, No. 22 BCS, but ACC champion), Tennessee (No. 7 recruiting, not rated in the BCS), Nebraska (No. 11 recruiting, not rated), Washington (No. 13 recruiting, not rated), Texas A&M (No. 14 recruiting, not rated), and Iowa (No. 17 recruiting, not rated).

Other big letdowns were North Carolina State, Virginia, Maryland, Clemson, California and Colorado.

"Don't freak out until you know the facts. Relax." - Shania Twain.

What's the point? Don't spend too much time sweating the recruiting rankings, for one. Tennessee, by most accounts, isn't having much of a year when it comes to commitments. So what?

The Vols had done the seventh-best recruiting job in America (according to the experts) over the last five years. Everyone knows how that turned out this past season.

Recruiting is important, there's no question about that. But to fret over the blue star rankings of recruiting analysts is often wasted time and wasted worry. It's an inexact science. Come to think of it, there's no real "science" to it.

Good coaching and a good system can turn five years of average recruiting into a good season on the field (see: Alabama, TCU, Oregon, Penn State, etc).

Also, many times the experts are just flat wrong. For example, one high school player on one side of Tennessee has been listed on several of this year's "top prospect" lists, thanks only to voters from the other side of the state who never actually saw him play. They voted his reputation. The player wasn't even nominated by the voters in his region.

Because of that, some school's fanbase is going to be very excited to land a consensus top-20 prospect that most people who've seen the player play do not believe to be a top-20 prospect at all.

So keep an eye on the recruiting game as it plays out. But don't go jumping off the Sunsphere if the experts don't give the Vols four blue stars and a big thumbs-up.

Good spring rankings aren't necessarily a good predictor for fall rankings.

John Pennington hosts Hall's Salvage Sports Source on Saturday at 11 a.m. on UPN Knoxville. He also writes a blog at govolsxtra.com.