Well, that comparison is totally cosmetic. WIS is not trying to match the star levels up with real life (nor do they need to) ... obviously if they had any inkling or desire to do that, they could make it just 3-, 4- and 5- star guys like Rivals, and then your chart would look totally reasonable and appear to correspond to real life. So yeah, it's a cosmetic comparison.

That said, your overall point re: recruit generation and the need to fix it so that the talent gap isn't so great is still completely on target.

Right, I was just trying to say how these guys who are in the top 150 actually deserve their 1 star ratings, because the talent drop-off is so huge.

In other words, the 150th overall recruit in WIS would be equivalent in talent to like the 400th best recruit in real life.

I was originally in the corner that guys at low D1 and mid majors were just overlooking some very good players and I still think 5 or 6 months ago that was definitely the case as we were constantly seeing D2 guys getting drafted that could've excelled at a mid major. Here is a guy I signed to my WVU team a few months back http://whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=0&pid=1778995. I signed him for $110 and that's the most I could've spent on him and he was even available to my D2 school in the same world so any D1 could've had him fairly easily.

However I'm seeing more and more that guys like this aren't around anymore (ranked in the 100s but still good). I came to the realization that recruit generation needed to change when looking at D1 conference RPI in Tark and last season in Knight, the BCS conferences are just head and shoulders above everybody else. In these worlds every BCS conference is or was over .5750 RPI while every non BCS conference was under .5000 are just above it. I've never seen the gap so big. I know it's partly due to the lower levels of D1 being empteir than in the past but it's likely emptier because it's harder to get quality recruits.

I completely agree mason. There are fewer and fewer of those diamond-in-the-rough players in the past two seasons than there seems to ever have been. And while this is only my 2nd season at DI (3rd batch of recruits I have seen at DI), I have always payed attention to recruits in the 100's just out of interest and there is a clear drop-off in talent. 

I'm guessing this is related - the last 2 recruiting seasons in Knight my A+ Valdosta St team has recruited from the D II list since I could not find any potential pulldowns within 370 miles that were better than what I could find in D II - I have no opinion on whether this is good or bad - I can't tell. Probably makes no real difference for D II but I imagine it influences the mid D I teams that would be looking to recruit those same players I used to pull down...

meh - the bigger issue is the lack of variance.  Some top tier RL recruits don't pan out or just simply become good but not elite players.  While, some lower tier recruits become breakout stars.  In HD, once you know potential, you know how good a recruit will end up by his senior year.  Star recruits become star players, mid tier recruits become mid level players, and low recruits never breakout.