Texas A&M football: Recruiting bias for Texas has reached ridiculous levels

Texas A&M football got bumped by Texas in the 247 Sports composite, but closely examining how that happened proves the ridiculous bias in favor of them.

Recruiting rankings don’t matter in the sense that they don’t affect how good a player will actually end up being. However, teams that get preferential treatment by recruiting services gain undeserved momentum that ends up helping them in their recruiting endeavors. This bias from the recruiting services also takes away credit/recognition from other players and teams who quite frankly deserve it more. The most egregious example of bias from the recruiting services is how they handle The University of Texas, which led to them jumping ahead of Texas A&M football in the 2019 rankings.

McCoy is a wide receiver out of California. He was a 5-star and rated as the No. 9 overall player in the country according to the 247Sports composite. He had committed to USC at the Army All-America Bowl, and it was well-known that Texas had been USC’s main competition. He signed his Letter Of Intent with USC, and even enrolled in classes there, but after USC offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury left USC to become the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, McCoy entered the transfer portal.

The decision to include Bru in the recruiting rankings of his new team, simply put, was bias from 247 Sports. Barton Simmons, the director of 247Sports, claims that there is precedent for their decision. However, this “precedent” is a big stretch.

The article mentions two players that have been released from their letters of intent and went to go to another school, where they were counted towards the recruiting class of their new school: Ale Kaho (Washington to Alabama) and Bryan Addison (UCLA to Oregon).

Neither Addison or Kaho had enrolled at their respective schools before being released from their LOIs and deciding to go elsewhere. This means that they were not transfers, unlike Bru McCoy. As Bru had signed his LOI and enrolled in classes at USC before deciding to go to Texas, he is by definition a transfer. Transfers do not count towards recruiting class rankings, so this is an unfair and arbitrary decision by 247Sports unless they decide to include all transfers in class rankings.