You see the comment time and time again either on Twitter, Facebook, or even the comments section in TSL’s commitment articles.  Whenever Virginia Tech gets a commitment from a 3-star recruit, some people make a comment like “that’s great, but we need more 4-star players in the program.”

Is that comment true? I decided to do a little bit of research to determine what 4-star players have done for the program in recent years.  My basic opinion before doing the research is that the opinion that Tech needs more 4-star players is valid and true, but that people make that comment not realizing that there have been a tremendous number of 4-star busts over the years.  Having a fourth star next to your name is nowhere near a guarantee of success.

I went back to 2009 and went through the 2016 class, and I used the 247 Composite rankings for a reference.  I stopped at 2016 because not all 2017 recruits have finished their Tech careers at this time.

Before compiling the list, I decided to break things down into six tiers to determine a player’s level of success or failure at Virginia Tech.  Here’s how I broke it down…

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