Blue Chip, Red Chip, White Chip
Blue Chip as you can guess originates from high stake card cames at the turn of the 1900's, basically blue chip equaled high value you're betting with/on.The term blue chip got co-opted by the stockmarket traders in the late 1920's to mean the safest "stocks with high potential return on investment" Basically the speculative nature of recruiting fits the high stake nature of both poker and stock investment. The terms Red-Chip/White Chip obviously also were born out of the poker days, and the value they have. (Blue --->Red ---> White)
"Blue Chip" as it relates to college athletes co-opted in verbage by sports writers and recrutniks before the dawn of rating systems, I've found articles on google dating back to the 1960's using the term. Parade Magazine's All American's starting in 1963 was formerly considered THE list of national blue chips.The Blue-White-Red rating system for prospects was used in earnest in the early 1980's and was part of the flourishing recruiting coverage business
