Stars are important, yes--absolutely. Not only for the talent on the field, but also because there's a pack mentality amongst top rated players. Be it either the "hot" school landing a great class and other kids wanting to jump on board (Tennessee this year, Ole Miss last year), or F$U/Bama/tOSU* having excellent seasons and drawing the top talent from all over the country.
The odds are that you get more 4*/5* kids if you land more 4*/5* kids. Those guys see each other at camps/combines, and they know who's good and who isn't. So, they know who they want to play with as a result...and they want to play with other highly talented players for the most part.
Then, you have schools like Miami, of which, there aren't many. The recruiting base in South Florida is fertile and rich. Miami shouldn't really have to go outside of South Florida, much less the state of Florida, to recruit. That's been covered ad nauseum. Texas recruiting might be the only other place where recruiting is similar. The difference there is, kids in the state of Texas covet Longhorn offers 2-3 years before their senior season of HS, and if they get it--they commit. We don't hold that kind of prestige in South Florida right now due to a multitude of factors, some our fault, some not.
Given those things--this year's class isn't "ideal" (yet), but the numbers are looking more like they should. Per Rivals, we have only One 5* (Chad Thomas), Eleven 4* kids, and Sixteen 3* kids. Those numbers need to trend more from the 3* and towards the 4/5* pool. Due to misses on guys in-state like Lane/Cook/Dixon/Sony/Rudolph/Treon Harris/Sean White/Demarcus Christmas/Keyon Brown/etc...it's not where it needs to be. Compare that to 2013's class from last year, and they had ZERO 5* kids, Nine 4* kids, and Eight 3* kids. The talent coming in has to be better...and at least from last year to this one, it's *wince* trending upward (neg away). We need to get better at tapping into that group mentality with recruits--getting them to bring more 4/5* kids with them to Miami.
One thing that is looking better is the number of FL kids we are taking. of our 28 recruits right now, 19 of them are from Florida, only 9 from out of state. That's an in-state percentage of about 68%. Compare that to last year, when only 6 of the 19 kids in that class were from Florida--a percentage of 31.5%. The 2012 class was 81% Florida kids. IMO--Unless we have to go out of state (to JUCO or HS) for a position of need (aka - DT), around 70-80% or more of the class should be from Florida. Last year's class dipped dramatically on that percentage for a lot of reasons. There's just too much in-state talent for that percentage not to be that high each and every year. That has to get better and become more consistent.
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