If someone would have told Sam Bradford in 2006 he would be the No. 1 pick in the 2010 NFL Draft, he might have called that person crazy.No one would have thought the young Oklahoma Sooner, a three-star prospect out of high school, would develop into a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.Year after year, college football recruiting boards are filled with high school athletes dreaming of playing football at the highest level. Some are more heavily recruited than others, and the final product these young athletes become is far from predictable.Recruiting Web sites award stars to high school athletes in an attempt to rank the field of players. LSU has recruited eight five-star athletes that either graduated from LSU or left early for the NFL draft since Rivals.com began issuing stars in 2002. Only half of the eight were drafted into the NFL. None of these four were selected in the first or second round of the draft. Defensive tackle Claude Wroten is the highest selected five-star athlete to come from LSU. Wroten, who was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in 2006, was selected in the third round at No. 68 overall.LSU has had nine first round selections to the NFL Draft since 2000. With the exception of three-star defensive end Tyson Jackson, every first round selection for the Tigers has been showered with awards and was highly recruited out of high school.Michael Clayton, Marcus Spears and JaMarcus Russell are three of the nine first rounders LSU has produced.Michael Clayton was a consensus high school All-American selection coming out of high school in 2001 and was named one of ESPN.com’s top 100 high school players in the nation. The former Tiger wide receiver was selected 15th overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2004 and will enter his seventh season with the team.Spears was rated as the nation’s No. 1 tight end prospect in high school and was listed as the No. 3 overall prospect by Superprep.com in 2001. He made the switch to defensive end at LSU and has enjoyed a successful career on the defensive side of the ball. Spears was selected by the Dallas Cowboys as the No. 20 pick overall in 2005 and has recorded 71 starts in five seasons.Russell was recruited as four-star quarterback out of Mobile, Ala. With tons of hype coming out of LSU, the Oakland Raiders picked Russell as the first overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft. The 6-foot 6-inch gunslinger has yet to pan out in the NFL, but the Raiders have not given up on Russell as he enters his fourth season with the team.One former Tiger who was not highly recruited out of high school is running back Jacob Hester. Hester was only a two-star prospect out of high school, according to Rivals.com, but racked up 1,780 yards and 20 touchdowns in his LSU career.Hester made a big name for himself in Baton Rouge despite his small stature and was picked in the third round as the No. 69 pick overall by the San Diego Chargers. The 5-foot 11-inch bruiser has played in 40 games in two seasons for San Diego with 13 starts.Rivals.com recruiting analyst Mike Scarborough said the star rating system is not based on high school statistics, but rather upon players’ potential to succeed in college.”I barely look at their accomplishments in high school,” Scarborough said. “A lot of it is the measurable, their athleticism and what they do at the combine and at the camps.”Most football fans who follow high school recruiting drool over the five-star prospects committing to their schools, and rightfully so. Local NFL draft analyst Mike Detillier said most of these guys didn’t just become great overnight.”Some guys have that skill set pretty early in their life, and it carries with them,” Detillier said.While many five-star prospects pan out and become great professional athletes, several of these highly recruited athletes never live up to the hype.Rivals.com awards about 25-30 athletes a five-star rating each year. Of the 32 players selected in the first round of the 2010 NFL Draft, only five were five-star athletes in high school. Fifteen of the draftees were four-stars, seven were three stars, and five were two-stars in high school.So what happens along the way to develop these two- and three-star athletes into potential future NFL all-stars?Both Scarborough and Detillier said a lot of it has to do with players maturing and developing physically later than others.”A lot of times … there is some physical development of a player,” Detillier said. “A 16- or 17-year-old may not fully mature until he gets 18 or 19 years old, and you can miss a little bit on that. A lot of time the body balance and coordination of a big man comes a little bit later, and at 16 you couldn’t have seen that because you’re just guessing at that stage.”- – – -Contact Mark Clements at [email protected]