initial predictor of you want (as long as there is no favoritism in the rankings such as ranking one a 5-star because they are going to Bama). However, on the field performance should completely dwarf recruiting rankings and I don't think that happens with a lot of ranking systems. There is bias or bad evaluation or late blooming or under the radar players all the time and there are also busts all the time. If you're gonna use player rankings at all, they should be reevaluated every game.