Recruiting is the lifeblood of a college football program, and every program adds talented players from the high school ranks every year. Recruiting has changed a little over the past few years with the addition of the transfer portal, and some teams blend the two avenues to acquire talent to fill roster needs.
FSU has been heavily criticized for transfer portal recruiting and not the high school aspect, although teams like Miami do it just as much and don’t receive that criticism.
We’ve been on record several times regarding high school recruiting and how it’s a scam by the websites that publish the rankings. There’s no way any of those websites that charge monthly subscription fees can accurately rank every high school player. They don’t have the time or resources. Recruiting is the lifeblood of THEIR existence and why they try to emphasize the importance of it.
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The dark side of high school recruiting is that player rankings are impacted more by politics, which players go to which camps and which team a player commits to. The physical attributes weigh into it somewhat, but if kids don’t go to camps, it’s nearly impossible to evaluate them because nobody has time to watch hours of high school football games from every team in the United States.
A prime example of how high school recruiting works is defensive back Jay Timmons. The FSU legacy committed to Indiana as a three-star in April 2025. He flipped his commitment to FSU in June and saw his ranking improve nearly 200 spots without playing a single high school football game.
Timmons flipped his commitment from FSU to Ohio State about a week ago and has a new five-star ranking, according to the Rivals recruiting service.
🚨NEW🚨 Ohio State CB commit Jay Timmons ranks No. 12 and 5-stars in the updated 2026 Rivals300🌰https://t.co/zIAeRoZ6bL pic.twitter.com/tB9pmkcu8m
— Rivals (@Rivals) November 17, 2025
He’s not a composite five-star. Timmons is a composite four-star and the No. 17 cornerback nationally. Of course, Ohio State is the No. 1 program nationally and the reigning National Champion. Timmons has been injured much of his senior year and has only played in five games. How can he get an improved ranking if he's barely played this fall?
Would Timmons receive this ranking bump if he hadn’t flipped from Indiana to FSU to Ohio State? We highly doubt it.