Was goofing around and reviewing the 2025 recruiting class. Over the years, I've always noticed how certain player's names just sounded like a great football player, or not. Or, their names sounded like they would either be a star, or a bust. So, just for kicks I thought I'd rate the 2025 recruiting class based upon their names. Stupid? Sure. I'll spoiler it so that those of you who have no desire to read the results can just skip over it.
Here is the approach I used. First, the scientific theory behind all this. There is none. Or is there? I believe that a person's name can tell you something about who they are. Names comes from historical family tree lineage. Names reflect the parent's styles and beliefs. Names have a certain lyrical sound to them. So, maybe there is some sort of science behind projecting a person's performance based on their name.
Second, I identified two predictions for each recruit. The first prediction is their performance relative to their ranking: heavily over perform, over perform, neutral, under perform, heavily under perform. The second prediction is the overall performance level they will achieve in the future: NFL quality or at least very strong starter, starter, play some, play little, bust. The Outcome Range is the potential range of outcomes for the individual, or said another way, how well does their name project the outcome. For example, some names leave you with the impression they will either end up as an NFL player, or a complete bust or anywhere in between. There is a wide range of potential outcomes. It's almost like standard deviation. Other players you feel more confident they will be a starter, but not an NFL player or a bust. That recruit has a narrow range of outcomes. It's about the range of outcomes for that player in the future: Very Wide, Wide, Average, Narrow, Very Narrow.
With all of that as groundwork, here are Dbeasy's 2025 Texas Football Recruiting Player Projections. It will be fun to look back on this in 3-4 years and see how incredibly wrong I was: