When you're in a tizzy six weeks from now over some snot-nosed 17-year-old linebacker who snubbed Hometown U. for the rival school, do us all a favor and get professional help.

The snake oil salesmen known as recruitniks are just around the corner, ready to spread their b.s. in coming weeks. Please, don't take the bait.

Recruiting rankings are a fraud, and here is our latest piece of evidence. David Biderman of the Wall Street Journal examined the 1,496 bowl game starters and found that only 8.4% of them were top-100 recruits.

Alabama's Mark Ingram, pictured with this post, was not among that select group. Ditto for Texas' Colt McCoy.

The team starting the most top-100 players is USC with 13, and the Trojans are playing in the Emerald Bowl.

Four teams — Oregon, Cincinnati, Texas Christian and Boise State — made it to Bowl Championship Series games without a top-100 recruit in the starting lineup.

Texas has nine top 100s, but is an underdog in the BCS title game to Alabama, which has only three.

Half of the 68 teams in this season's bowl field didn't have a single starter in their final regular-season game that was considered a top-100 prospect in high school, according to Rivals.com.