Mike's analysis was always a joke. He knew nothing about X's and O's. His analysis was always about a kids offer sheet....and "he's being recruited like a 3/4/5 star"
To be fair to Mike, that is the primary way scout.com ranks players and associates appropriate star rating.
Fair doesn't mean over-generous. Mike would write that in premium board message threads and chat room discussions. It's not just company line article filler. It was his view. I'm not even saying it's an awful way to think about it, and there's some honesty in him not claiming more evaluating ability than he has.
But it wasn't just because Scout used that format in articles that he parroted it over and over.
Perhaps he just didn't or doesn't know any better.
Most of his "big calls" in regards to evaluations are well documented cases where there were certain members of Randy's staff that were enamored with that player...you can connect those dots.
I mean, if your method of evaluating a 4* or 5* player is the fact that he is recruited by Miami, FSU, and UF...that is how it will usually be.
Me? I'd prefer an honest evaluation of their ability, but as has been discussed so many times before, there are so many factors that go into actually placing some sort of numerical rating on a high school player its silly.
I'm not making excuses for ol boy, I'm just saying, that's what he knows and I guess believes in. Plus, he was hella lazy, so its an easy fallback for him to evaluate based on the least amount of work possible. I don't agree with the method, especially when you are a state-guy and have more flexibility in your analysis and have more access (supposedly) to these players, but that is what it was, IMO.