These rankings have me plenty rankled

And to think Super Bowl media day gets dismissed as a farce. It's a symposium at Harvard compared to the fraud perpetuated on the viewing public all day Wednesday.

It was "National Signing Day," a newly made-for-TV extravaganza, during which all the college football programs in the country unveil their recruiting classes. ESPNU punctuates the day with live cut-ins of some of the nation's top unsigned players, airing concocted drama. High school kids, who aren't burdened with, you know, math class or anything, choose among several schools and finally don the cap of the winner.

Even if you could stomach such schmaltz, there's just no digesting the truly pathetic part of the day: The exhaustive "ratings" attached to each player.

As if these people and their rating systems could honestly distinguish the 32nd-rated safety from Paducah, Ky., from the 154th-rated tight end from Topeka. As Urban Meyer, back in the days when he was one of those coach-turned-media clowns asked last year, "I'd like to know what distinguishes No. 147 from No. 320."

I'd like to know that, too.

Or why otherwise self-sufficient, generally bright people flock to team message boards and join in the evaluations, falling for all the absurd ratings and numbers like Charlie Brown about to kick the ball.

It could be the "ESPN Top 150." Or the numbers spewing from rivals.com, scout.com or any of the other outposts that attach numbers to children.

A few questions about the process:

By whom are the high school players evaluated?

What are their credentials?

Assuming these people know a "right guard" is a position on the offensive line and not a can of deodorant, how many times do they see the players in question?

Do they honestly see the players in question?

Live?

On film?

Against what level of competition?

What is the methodology?

Is the methodology the same at ESPN as it is at Rivals and Scout?

How could it possibly be scientific, given the river of variables?

Did the player maybe have the flu that day or a fight with his significant other that may have altered his performance?

Was the field wet?

Are the players evaluated on ability or is it self-perpetuating? Example: If Alabama and Florida want him, he must be good.

Which brings us to the criticism leveled at UConn coach Paul Pasqualoni for his latest recruiting class. How in the name of Vincent Thomas Lombardi can anyone tell whether the kids will be any good? What, because some guy says some kid is a "two-star" player, the kid's destined to be lousy?

This just in: Victor Cruz was a "one-star" player. Matt Ryan was a "two-star" player. I'm guessing kids like Alfred Fincher, Donald Thomas and other UConn kids to make the NFL never merited a peep from the self-professed experts.

This is not about picking examples of kids from fixed points in time and making it gospel. There are hundreds (and hundreds) of examples of "two-star" players becoming high-level players and "five-star" players who are duds.

Lest we forget the time UConn got a receiver named Dwayne Difton, a highly regarded "four-star" receiver from Florida. The fan base was breathless. Turned out Difton couldn't catch the stomach flu on a diarrhea ward, let alone a football.

Doesn't it chafe you to think about how this feigned attempt at talent evaluation has altered college sports?

Coaches are judged now on the "ratings" of their recruiting classes. This is before one kid ever plays a down in college. Expectations rise over highly rated classes. If winning isn't commensurate, the coach is a dog. All that talent and he can't win?

Expectations fall over lower-rated classes. If winning happens, the coach is a genius, doing "more with less."

Once again: Is there a bigger fraud perpetuated on us?

And why would fans want to evaluate the merits of high school kids they've never seen, based on all the aforementioned variables?

I'm with Geno Auriemma on this. Auriemma tells all his potential recruits: "If you're good, you'll play. If you suck, you won't."

But if we left it at that, so many poor talent evaluators would be out of work.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.