Best insider/recruiting site?

[ddsdevil]

Hello all.

I've been thinking about getting an acct. with either scout or rivals but didn't know which is better for recruiting. Which would you recommend? Are there others besides these two?

[Cormac]

Hello all.

I've been thinking about getting an acct. with either scout or rivals but didn't know which is better for recruiting. Which would you recommend? Are there others besides these two?

Full disclosure: I don't have an account with any of these services.

From what I've read/can gather, rivals is the best for football recruiting, scout is the best for basketball recruiting and ESPN should be avoided at all costs. People seem to think that rivals is more accurate in their evaluations of football players than scout is and the same for scout re basketball. Probably not helpful at all, but I figured I'd chime in while I'm trying to avoid work. Rivals seems to offer more free articles than scout, and usually their rankings are fairly similar from what I can tell anyway. IE scout may have someone as a high 4 star and rivals might have him as a low 5 star. Not much of a difference to me anyway.

[Diddy]

I don't mean to crack on you, but why pay?

I troll recruiting sites, regularly, and I have never paid for any of them. Allow me to break it down.

Rivals: This is my favorite site. They don't do as good a job of player evaluation (for free) as does Scout. But, Rivals has some great freebies. Every week during the season, usually on Wed, they do a free mid week report with lots of good info. Every Friday, their head Guru, Jerry Meyer, has a mailbag wherein he answers reader questions. A Duke question, or a Duke target is probably featured 3 out of 4 weeks. Great Info there. They also offer a lot of other free articles that chronicle big AAU, HS Tourneys, and summer camps. I love Rivals for their free stuff. As a negative, much of their evaluations are really based on a player's pro potential, not his impact at the college level.

Scout: Great player evals. Once the players are seniors at any rate. They are bad to profile a player as a soph or early in his Jr year, and then not update the stats until they are seniors. And once a kid commits, he might as well dissappear as far as they are concerned, unless he is a high major superstud in waiting. I mean a Oden, Durant, Beasly type talent. They do a good job of projecting a kid's impact at the college level, but there aren't a lot of updates.

It really depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking purely for BBall updates, try out prepstars (recruiter's handbook) website. It is all pay, but their publication is great. It recently changed owners, so I am not sure if the quality will continue.

ESPN's premium stuff is a gyp, but they also offer a lot of free stuff.

If you want purely Duke BBall info, Watzone's site is apparantly pretty good. Most of his stuff ends up here, either through him or other sources, but he has a good lead time.

The main downside of premium sites is the players themselves. If you are looking for interviews that give true insight to a recruits intentions (in a crystal ball sense) you are out of luck. During free previews at Rivals, Espn, and Scout, I have read multiple interviews by the same player given to different homers (sites focused on a single school but owned by the main site). In each of those interviews the kid has made promising statements about that given school. The reality is that these kids are media savvy. They don't really give anything away, at all. Most of the so call gurus, even those devoted to only one school, are wildely wrong a couple of times a year.

My feeling is that with a little work you can get a lot of info, for free, from different sites. If you want to pay, cool. As a Duke fan, Watzone's site is probably the best for Duke specific info. But there won't be a lot of hard facts, cause they don't exist. At best, you are buying early access to info, because it all ends up here, for free, within hours of the news breaking.

[jv001]

I don't mean to crack on you, but why pay?

I troll recruiting sites, regularly, and I have never paid for any of them. Allow me to break it down.

Rivals: This is my favorite site. They don't do as good a job of player evaluation (for free) as does Scout. But, Rivals has some great freebies. Every week during the season, usually on Wed, they do a free mid week report with lots of good info. Every Friday, their head Guru, Jerry Meyer, has a mailbag wherein he answers reader questions. A Duke question, or a Duke target is probably featured 3 out of 4 weeks. Great Info there. They also offer a lot of other free articles that chronicle big AAU, HS Tourneys, and summer camps. I love Rivals for their free stuff. As a negative, much of their evaluations are really based on a player's pro potential, not his impact at the college level.

Scout: Great player evals. Once the players are seniors at any rate. They are bad to profile a player as a soph or early in his Jr year, and then not update the stats until they are seniors. And once a kid commits, he might as well dissappear as far as they are concerned, unless he is a high major superstud in waiting. I mean a Oden, Durant, Beasly type talent. They do a good job of projecting a kid's impact at the college level, but there aren't a lot of updates.

It really depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking purely for BBall updates, try out prepstars (recruiter's handbook) website. It is all pay, but their publication is great. It recently changed owners, so I am not sure if the quality will continue.

ESPN's premium stuff is a gyp, but they also offer a lot of free stuff.

If you want purely Duke BBall info, Watzone's site is apparantly pretty good. Most of his stuff ends up here, either through him or other sources, but he has a good lead time.

The main downside of premium sites is the players themselves. If you are looking for interviews that give true insight to a recruits intentions (in a crystal ball sense) you are out of luck. During free previews at Rivals, Espn, and Scout, I have read multiple interviews by the same player given to different homers (sites focused on a single school but owned by the main site). In each of those interviews the kid has made promising statements about that given school. The reality is that these kids are media savvy. They don't really give anything away, at all. Most of the so call gurus, even those devoted to only one school, are wildely wrong a couple of times a year.

My feeling is that with a little work you can get a lot of info, for free, from different sites. If you want to pay, cool. As a Duke fan, Watzone's site is probably the best for Duke specific info. But there won't be a lot of hard facts, cause they don't exist. At best, you are buying early access to info, because it all ends up here, for free, within hours of the news breaking.

Have to agree almost 100% with this excellent breakdown. I do agree that Watzone's site is the very best for all Duke sports. However he is really more than a few hours ahead of the other services. Most times he is days ahead. It is well worth the $$$. Good luck and Go Duke!

[ddsdevil]

Thanks for the info!

[SupaDave]

None of it matters as long as you remember that recruiting is an inexact science.

There will be kids below the radar, kids at less heralded programs, kids who blow up during the summer, kids that grow 6 inches in a year, and the always deceiving kid who really wants an education.

Put all of this together and you realize that the best investment just might be a quarter...

...so you can flip it!!!

[RainingThrees]

I like rivals the best, because I can read their board for free. Scout seems easier to navigate around though, as rivals usually doesn't list who is on the schools radar, just the recruits who sign.

[du_bb1]

Having, over the years, tried all--Watson is well above the rest--IMHO

[kramerbr]

If you are looking at mainly Duke recruiting, nobody does a better job than Blue Devil Nation. You find out information well before the other sites have anything up and it is always credible.

Scout is good, but they typically put up the same information that was posted on BDN hours before.

[watzone]

I don't mean to crack on you, but why pay?

I troll recruiting sites, regularly, and I have never paid for any of them. Allow me to break it down.

Rivals: This is my favorite site. They don't do as good a job of player evaluation (for free) as does Scout. But, Rivals has some great freebies. Every week during the season, usually on Wed, they do a free mid week report with lots of good info. Every Friday, their head Guru, Jerry Meyer, has a mailbag wherein he answers reader questions. A Duke question, or a Duke target is probably featured 3 out of 4 weeks. Great Info there. They also offer a lot of other free articles that chronicle big AAU, HS Tourneys, and summer camps. I love Rivals for their free stuff. As a negative, much of their evaluations are really based on a player's pro potential, not his impact at the college level.

Scout: Great player evals. Once the players are seniors at any rate. They are bad to profile a player as a soph or early in his Jr year, and then not update the stats until they are seniors. And once a kid commits, he might as well dissappear as far as they are concerned, unless he is a high major superstud in waiting. I mean a Oden, Durant, Beasly type talent. They do a good job of projecting a kid's impact at the college level, but there aren't a lot of updates.

It really depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking purely for BBall updates, try out prepstars (recruiter's handbook) website. It is all pay, but their publication is great. It recently changed owners, so I am not sure if the quality will continue.

David Glenn bought the Sports Journal, not prep stars. Altough Prep Stars was once an offspring of the original Sports Journal sometimes called the Poop Sheet.

ESPN's premium stuff is a gyp, but they also offer a lot of free stuff.

If you want purely Duke BBall info, Watzone's site is apparantly pretty good. Most of his stuff ends up here, either through him or other sources, but he has a good lead time.

Most of my stuff does not end up here. If it does, I generally print it. There have been some instances though, but that seems to be the nature of things and not a problem for just me. DBR actively seeks to protect others information, but rumors are a hard thing to monitor in a forum of this size.

The main downside of premium sites is the players themselves. If you are looking for interviews that give true insight to a recruits intentions (in a crystal ball sense) you are out of luck. During free previews at Rivals, Espn, and Scout, I have read multiple interviews by the same player given to different homers (sites focused on a single school but owned by the main site). In each of those interviews the kid has made promising statements about that given school. The reality is that these kids are media savvy. They don't really give anything away, at all. Most of the so call gurus, even those devoted to only one school, are wildely wrong a couple of times a year.

[I]I agree that players do not always give honest answers. However some talk to kids as a national site and not mention the school name, thus better answers. I don't think all guru's are wrong. How can you prop up Prep Stars is that much better than Telep, Gibbons or others? I do like Brett and company and think a lot of the Sports Journal as well. No guru has a crystal ball, but they are often cornered and asked to guess. Some of them stay safe and simply give the facts. If a kid lies, what can you do?/I]

My feeling is that with a little work you can get a lot of info, for free, from different sites. If you want to pay, cool. As a Duke fan, Watzone's site is probably the best for Duke specific info. But there won't be a lot of hard facts, cause they don't exist. At best, you are buying early access to info, because it all ends up here, for free, within hours of the news breaking.

You are indeed correct, but some like to pay to cut to the chase. But one can certainly speculate from headlines and figure out the basic stuff. As for a lack of facts, I strongly disagree. Some Premium sites cover more than recruiting, they might go behind the scenes. Or they may know what coaches are watching prospects, when and where or which players are truly being looked at. Those are indeed facts. Lastly, how can you truly iffer a valid opinion unless you have actually tried a premium site? Rivals and Scout offer free trial so one can try them out free, but I hope you understand it's hard to not respond when someone is making opinions which are not hard facts. Make no mistake, premium sites are not for everybody and you can have a good fan experience without subscribing to one.

[CameronCrazy'11]

I would also add that Scout and Rivals both have free Duke message boards. DBR is generally the best board, I think, if you just want to talk about Duke b-ball. However, Scout probably has the best free message board for Duke recruiting information. Generally, all the premium information flows down to the free board in just a few hours. You do have to read with a skeptical eye over there. There are always a few people who claim to be the friend of the coach of the friend of some high-major prospect and know that he is a "lock" for some school or other. Generally, the more reliable posters will call them out on it though.

[SupaDave]

You are indeed correct, but some like to pay to cut to the chase. But one can certainly speculate from headlines and figure out the basic stuff. As for a lack of facts, I strongly disagree. Some Premium sites cover more than recruiting, they might go behind the scenes. Or they may know what coaches are watching prospects, when and where or which players are truly being looked at. Those are indeed facts. Lastly, how can you truly iffer a valid opinion unless you have actually tried a premium site? Rivals and Scout offer free trial so one can try them out free, but I hope you understand it's hard to not respond when someone is making opinions which are not hard facts. Make no mistake, premium sites are not for everybody and you can have a good fan experience without subscribing to one.

Not giving any endorsements here but most recruiting sites are a hodge podge of facts and infrequent news clippings. I personally don't need them b/c I can pick up the phone and talk to some pretty prominent AAU folks. And if you really like to research all you have to do is follow a player's local newspaper.

HOWEVER, if Watzone were selling fantasy football services. I would buy. I like his layout that much.

By the way, I like the Lions over the Saints this weekend so take anything I say about recruiting with a grain of salt.