WHAT COLLEGE FOOTBALL CAN LEARN FROM PUTIN

Hilarious. Putin starts his own credit rating agency after declaring Moody's and S&P are foreign agents. https://t.co/7MT6RSQzOI

— Bill Browder (@Billbrowder) March 19, 2016

With the exception of "Art Briles should attend practice shirtless and on horseback," I rarely hear of something Vladimir Putin's done and think it'd be good to copy in college football, mostly because the Pac 12 can't get its shit together enough to annex Crimea. But starting your own credit agency because the existing ones keep disrespecting you? That has a very natural analogue.

Take a look at the middle of the 247 recruiting class rankings:

This isn't ideal for Missouri or Vanderbilt, who are both nearly twenty spots back from the next-lowest SEC program, 32nd ranked Mississippi State. They're behind Pitt, Duke, and Maryland. Sure, Vandy and Mizzou could write this off as a one year blip and try to bounce back next year, but that's a lot of work with no real guarantee of success.

And that's where you take a page from Putin: start your own recruit ratings service. Those three stars you've got, Missouri? Now they're a bunch of five stars and a handful of four stars. Where's Vanderbilt ranked on DorthStar? Number one, thanks to signing three six star recruits - and, we should point out, Alabama has NONE. Rivals says we're not in the top 30? Rivals uses flawed methodology and intentionally favors their larger subscriber bases. The hardworking folks at Missourecruit dares to look deeper and question the status quo.

It's completely transparent and shady, but I'm pretty sure it's not an NCAA violation, especially if you set it up as something formally independent and give it clear marching orders. (Don't quote me on that, I'm wrong pretty often.) Give it a shot! You'll be glad you did when you're sending out those tweets about your tenth consecutive top five class.