A lot has been made of Enrique Davis de-committing from Auburn. But does it really matter?

First of all, Davis was a “five-star” recruit. College football sites rank players by using the aforementioned star star system, with five stars being the highest. Of course, any player with five stars has talent and is a big pickup for a legit college football program. They don’t transfer into success on the field though. Players have to qualify for school first, something Davis didn’t do last year.

Even if he came to Auburn, there is no guarantee Davis would qualify academically and be able to play football come August 31st. And while Davis may have torn it up in high school, it’s really hard to watch high school talent and translate that into college, and in this case, SEC talent. Yes, you can see the difference in talent in players, there’s no doubting that. But there’s no guarantee of collegiate success based on a high school career.

Some names Auburn fans might recognize: Ben Grubbs and Courtney Taylor. What about them? They were both one star recruits. One star. Quentin Groves and Antonio Coleman? Three stars. So there’s a flip side to five stars not panning out, which is lower-profile recruits developing into some of the best players on the team and even the in the entire country.

Another thing you have to consider when looking at recruiting rankings and the like are what teams need to fill what positions. Coaches will not pass on great talent, but they are going to be concentrating on filling the needs they have. For Auburn, a lot of that is getting players in who will fit the spread offense brought in by Tony Franklin.

At this point, Auburn has three, almost four running backs available for next year. Brad Lester, Ben Tate, Mario Fannin, and Tristan Davis. In the end, Fannin might end up a receiver in the spread. That still leaves three backs for a system that will use the speed of Lester and Tristan Davis. That leaves Tate with an unknown role, and really nowhere for Enrique Davis to play next year. He might have been redshirted, he might have played, you don’t know.

In fact, he still might end up here. But it’s not the end of the world if he doesn’t. There’s other running backs, and if Enrique Davis ends up being one of the best backs ever to play collegiate ball, that’s our loss. I think we’ll survive on the Plains.

Do recruiting rankings matter? Yes. Do they always translate into success on the field? No.