He owes you something? No, he doesn't. He helped create a system like they did for rating movies...
He won, good for him. I wish I would have thought of it!
Yeah, he owes an
explanation as to why he helped create a system of rankings that he now purports do not correspond to reality whatsoever. That's bogus. He now apparently thinks people who offer evaluations are just making wild guesses, and they're not, certainly not in every instance. Stars correspond to various things that can be seen on a recruit's tape, and his list of offers, and perhaps other factors, which when combined give you a more accurate representation of the athlete's potential than a completely random one. That's why a Rivals ranking would turn out, on average, to be far more accurate than merely assigning 5 stars to all players whose last names begin with the letter A.
Is it flawed?
Obviously. If that was his point, then he overstated his case. I can tell you one of "the most bogus things ever": astrology. Why? Because it's false, utterly false. It makes no contact with reality at any point.
Analogous to star rankings, when someone like Roger Ebert comes up with criteria for ranking movies, they aren't merely based on just on his subjective tastes. He provides reasons for thinking a film was good or bad. And when he acknowledges that his reaction to a film may not be your reaction, saying things like, "This movie didn't resonate with me, but it might with younger audiences," if he thinks the movie is bad, he doesn't say things like this as if to point out that the younger audience's reaction to the film can
make it good. If the movie has an incoherent plot structure, is shot poorly, has terrible pacing, etc..., he is providing you with
reasons for thinking the movie is bad, not merely an expression of his opinion.