Executive Summary
This article describes the challenge of applying the Adjusted Rating to Transfer players. It is meant as a supplement to the Adjusted Rating Series. I have made it a separate article because including it with the other posts was interfering with the flow of those articles. Many may not care about the details, and therefore, they do not need those below.
If you are a details person and want to understand how the calculation of the Adjusted Rating is done for the Transfer Players, this is the detail you need.
Background
We have introduced the Talent and Development Adjusted Rating to track how both genetics (as reflected in a prospect's talent in their initial recruiting rating) and environment (the ability of a program to help a player develop) work together to define a college football player's performance and potential on the field. It would help you to understand the rest of this by reading this introduction first.
How to treat transfer players is probably the most challenging aspect of the adjusted rating.
As a reminder, here is my revised scale to help you draw to comparison to something more familiar.
Let's use Trey Moore as the best example here.
Trey was not even a two-star prospect as a recruit. Let's assume for the sake of discussion he just missed this level and assign him a 0.7799. He has a 247 Sports transfer rating of 0.9300.
Here is the question. What does that 0.9300 represent?
In the minds of the recruiting services, I think they are saying Moore is the equivalent of a 0.9300 HS prospect now- an upper to mid four-star prospect. My challenge is how do I treat that number for my adjusted rating calculation? I think there are three options.
The 0.9300 represents his development to date, and any development at Texas forward should be added to the 0.9300. Currently this means Moore would have an alternate transfer prospect rating of 0.9300 and this would be a three-star rating in the alternate rating scale. This is too low and not right.
Alternately the development could be added to the original recruiting ranking. This would mean Moore would have an adjusted rating of 1.0891. By the scale above this would be a high 3-star (3.5) transfer prospect but almost a 4-star. This COULD be correct.
The 0.9300Â is a reflection that, knowing what we know now, Moore was actually a mid-4-star recruiting prospect originally. ALL of his development, including the UTSA development, should be added to the 0.9300. This would give him an alternate rating of 1.2392- a strong four-star rating. THIS seems correct. I think it reflects what the recruiting services are saying when they gave Moore the 0.9300 score. This is how I have treated all transfers.
To validate this opinion, ask yourself does this look like the other 3-star, high 3-star, or a 4-star college football player?
Yes, I KNOW these are highlights. Give me some of that in 2024.
The application of this methodology would very much the same with Silas Bolden- the original three-star prospect is now a four-star transfer player, and this is validated in the adjusted rating scale.
Here are three Texas transfers where there is a gap between the recruiting rating and the transfer rating.
This system also can be applied to lower a player's true Adjusted Rating. Tiaoalii Savea was a mid-4-star level recruit. He has been assigned a 0.8800 transfer rating which would make him a high-3-star transfer in the recruiting services minds. The Adjusted Rating for Savea would indicate based on his limited development so far, that he may actually be more of a mid-3-star transfer. Given reports that Texas is STILL interested in another DT transfer and Savea relative standing to the other DTs on the Texas roster, this is probably accurate.
I discuss all of the transfers in the transfer portal article below, but I wanted to include this detail to explain how the transfer Adjusted Rating scores were calculated.