Sports Talk

● By Sam Teets
When I started producing monthly big boards, I intended to rank the top 200 prospects each month. I only ranked 150 this time around. Players deciding to transfer or return to school eliminated roughly 30 prospects that were high-level candidates for the top 200. About 60 total prospects that I either already had reports for or felt confident speaking about decided to return to school, which left me with a massive void. I couldn’t comfortably fill out a top 200, so I trimmed the total number of prospects to 150. This speaks to the immense amount of talent returning to college next year and emphasizes the weaknesses of this year’s draft. There’s a significant drop in talent once you get past 40 or 50. Even the top 20 is pretty shaky. In an ideal world, every prospect outside of the top ten would be ten to 15 spots lower than they actually are. Here’s my December version for those interested in how the rankings have changed. Positional value wasn’t a factor in producing these rankings.

Top Players Not Included

These players appear in the top 100 of our

Consensus Big Board

, but do not show up on this big board.