National signing day was yesterday as the top rated high school players all over the country sign with their favorite school. It is one of the most important days of the year for each college team as usually the teams with the best recruiting classes year in and year out usually find themselves in the Top 25.

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.

While my final recruiting rankings for this year will not be completed for awhile, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my top overall 100 players.

Phil Steele’s Current 2012 Top 100 Incoming Frosh

Read more…

My 2010 NFL Draft Guide is now ready to download and it contains all the information you need to become an expert on this year’s draft including pro workout dates, combine invitees by position, teams with the most draft losses, the draft order for the 1st two rounds and much more.

Make sure to check the guide regularly as we will be updating and adding information daily. Tomorrow we will have the position by position rankings of the top NFL prospects plus the first edition of my mock draft. In Friday’s Blog I will continue my NFL Draft coverage with a look at the top quarterbacks for this year complete with their strengths and weaknesses and a round projection. On Monday I will cover the Running Backs followed by the Receivers and Offensive Lineman next week.

Today’s blog continues the NFL draft coverage with the top rated small school players. Every year 15-20 small school players get drafted and many turn out to have fine pro careers. Josh Buchanan who runs JBScouting.com does a great job following FCS football and he contributes significantly to my FCS preview. Josh also has scouted for the Texas vs. Nation Game and East Coast Bowl the last few years and has interned with the Carolina Panthers. He has just released his top 100 small school players and will be updating them throughout the month as the pro day workouts are completed.

Here are the Top 100 Small School Players for the 2010 NFL Draft. Read more…