A couple of years ago, I started using a half-star system when rating Virginia Tech football recruits every February. How would recruits from the past rank in such a system? Today, we’ll look at the starting lineup of the 1993 Virginia Tech Hokies and find out.

I chose 1993 because many people (me included) believe that the Hokies are going to have to start winning before they can go head-to-head with the big boys for a lot of the highly-ranked in-state talent. 1993 was the year the Virginia Tech bowl streak began, so I thought it would be good to go back and look at that starting lineup and see how each of those guys could be ranked in the modern era.

The comparison is very difficult because offer lists were a lot smaller 30 years ago than they are today. Back then, Tech faced basically mid-level competition (by today’s standards) for many in-state 4-star prospects, and there was almost no competition for many players who we would consider 3-star players today.

For those of you who have been around, you know about my half-star system. For those of you who have come on board since Andy Bitter was hired, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. Here’s a link that explains why I do it and how I do it, but the gist of it is that I think there’s generally a big difference between the No. 46 player and the No. 350, yet both guys are considered 4-star recruits, so many fans see them all in the same light. There are too many 4-star recruits, in my opinion, and probably too many 3-star prospects as well.

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