It’s been a few weeks since the early signing period. Most players are signed, which means the vast majority of takeaways from this last cycle are set.
Let’s get into some thoughts:
• In this year’s cycle, the top 100 players in the 247Sports Composite were spread out among 22 different programs. That may sound encouraging until you realize that 26 programs signed top-100 players in the 2022 cycle. Four top-100 players remain unsigned.
• There was still a cluster of elite-level players going to a small group of schools. Alabama signed 15 top-100 players, Georgia landed 11, Texas and Oklahoma each got eight, and Ohio State signed seven. That means that 49 of the top 100 players nationally signed with one of five schools.
• We thought that maybe NIL would change the game and stop the top talent from clustering at the top. We thought maybe NIL would be the reason 20 schools signed three top-100 players rather than a small collection of programs taking roughly half. That didn’t happen in this cycle, though it did moderately improve. In last year’s cycle, 51 of the top 100 players went to four schools — Texas A&M (18), Alabama (15), Georgia (11) and Ohio State (seven).
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Recruiting winners (Oregon, Bama) and losers (Notre Dame, Ohio State) on signing day
• Recruiting is about consistency and signing elite-level classes year over year. Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State are in a distinct club that does this on an annual basis, though the Buckeyes were a distant third in this small group of recruiting kings in the 2023 cycle. What could be encouraging, though, is that teams like Texas and Oklahoma elbowed their way into this cluster. If more programs join that cluster and take turns hoarding top-100 players, that will lead to wider disbursement of talent.
• The true path to parity isn’t the expanded College Football Playoff, though TCU has showed us what kind of fun games are awaiting us. The true path to parity is finding a way to curtail the absurd number of top-100 players who are headed to Alabama and Georgia and sprinkling more of them into some of the other 20-or-so programs that signed top-100 players. The sport would be so much more even if you had 20 programs signing five top-100 players rather than five programs signing 49. There is just an embarrassment of riches at the top, which I believe will likely become apparent during the national title game on Monday.
• Having a loaded recruiting class doesn’t guarantee you’ll win. Texas A&M taught us that. But not having elite-level recruiting classes makes it impossible to win a national title. TCU has a chance to prove that statement wrong, but I suspect there isn’t coaching good enough to overcome Georgia’s talent advantage over the Horned Frogs. Georgia has 68 blue-chip prospects on its roster, including 15 former five-star recruits. TCU has 17 total blue-chip prospects on its roster. That means Georgia has nearly as many five-stars as TCU has blue-chip players. How does that happen? By signing classes like this year’s over and over and over again. The result? National titles.
• Alabama just had to get five-star cornerback Desmond Ricks of Bradenton (Fla.) IMG at the end of this cycle, didn’t it? Nick Saban is a recruiting robot, and the consistency in which he has dominated this space is breathtaking. There’s no other way to put it. Alabama won yet another recruiting crown, its 10th dating back to the 2011 cycle. I think there’s a correlation between that recruiting dominance and the dominance of Alabama’s football program during the Saban era.
• Alabama signed seven five-star prospects this year. The rest of the teams in the top 10 signed a combined 16. Let that sink in.
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Suttles: Alabama recruiting class is one of Nick Saban’s most impressive feats
• Ohio State’s class is ranked No. 6 overall. While the Buckeyes have an average player rating of 93.57 — third-highest behind only Alabama and Georgia — this class wasn’t Ryan Day’s best work. Not only did Ohio State miss on every 50-50 target it was in the mix for leading up to the first day of the early signing period, three of the top four players in the class are wide receivers. While receivers coach Brian Hartline deserves a ton of credit for his unbelievable run as a recruiting assistant, the numbers are skewed as a result of being stacked at one position. Three of the seven top-100 prospects in the class play the same position, and there are holes at important spots on the roster — such as running back and defensive back — that weren’t addressed with elite players.
• This is one of the more interesting cycles in memory because we have so many prominent coaches in their first year at name-brand schools. Lincoln Riley at USC. Billy Napier at Florida. Brent Venables at Oklahoma. Mario Cristobal at Miami. Dan Lanning at Oregon. Brian Kelly at LSU. Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame. Trying to decide who had the best first full cycle at their school is difficult because, frankly, they all did very well. We’ll get to thoughts on each one of them in this column.
• But ties are for soccer. This is football. The first-year head coach who blew me away the most is Venables. He came to Oklahoma as a first-time head coach. He replaced Riley, who bolted to USC after turning Oklahoma into a consistent Playoff team. And what did Venables do? He signed a class that is currently ranked No. 5 nationally — and that’s better than any class during Riley’s tenure with the Sooners. Eight top-100 players? Yep. A five-star quarterback? Yep. Winning a huge signing day battle for five-star safety Peyton Bowen of Denton (Texas) Ryan? Yep. And this class has some versatility — it’s not just flashy skill players (like a certain class in Southern California). Though I never saw eye-to-eye with Venables’ “no-visit” policy, there is absolutely no question that he knocked it out of the park in his first recruiting cycle. That’s how you build a program back up. Bravo.
• Ironically enough, Riley’s class at USC is ranked No. 15 overall and includes (for now) only four top-100 players. Yes, Riley signed two of the top five players in the country in five-star quarterback Malachi Nelson of Los Alamitos (Calif.) High and five-star receiver Zachariah Branch of Las Vegas (Nev.) Bishop Gorman. But he also left a lot to be desired, especially on the line of scrimmage. USC is going to be an offensive monster because Riley has unquestionably proven he can do that, but his recruiting classes don’t leave much hope for the Trojans fixing the defense. There are currently two blue-chippers on defense — not nearly enough for the progress that needs to be made at USC. I will admit that I thought Riley was going to come to USC and immediately sign a star-studded recruiting class in his first cycle. He didn’t do that.
• Freeman’s first full Notre Dame class is ranked No. 8 overall. The Irish signed four top-100 players and seven in the top 150. Their average player rating (92.10) is No. 7 nationally. While this is a very solid class, I’m sure Notre Dame fans are a tad disappointed to lose some of the top-end talent Freeman once had committed. Bowen flipped to Oregon and then to Oklahoma on the first day of the early signing period. Notre Dame also lost five-star defensive end Keon Keeley of Tampa (Fla.) Berkeley Prep to Alabama. This is the only top-10 class that does not include a five-star prospect. Solid is good, there’s no question, but there was a time when it seemed as though the Irish were going to finish with some of the elite talent their classes lacked in the past. That didn’t materialize. Still, I’m excited to see what Freeman can do in the next cycle. He’s clearly a gifted recruiter who connects with today’s prospects.
• Though Oregon didn’t end up signing Bowen after flipping him from Notre Dame, the Ducks did some damage by flipping four-star quarterback Austin Novosad of Dripping Springs (Texas) High from Baylor, flipping four-star cornerback Daylen Austin of Long Beach (Calif.) Poly from LSU and signing five-star defensive end Matayo Uiagalelei of Bellflower (Calif.) St. John Bosco. That was big-boy recruiting for the Ducks at the 11th hour. It was the type of ruthlessness you’d expect from a coach who came up the ranks working for Kirby Smart at Georgia. But Oregon, which has the No. 11 class despite signing 27 players, signed similar classes under Cristobal in the past. It was a solid first class for Lanning, but I have a sneaky suspicion he has a lot more left in the tank for future years.
I don’t care if Dan Lanning himself had to drive to Walter White’s storage facility in Albuquerque with a nylon bag and hand-deliver it to the 5-star prospects.
On Oregon, it’s class and your poor temperament: https://t.co/4lrNDScw8S
— Ari Wasserman (@AriWasserman) December 21, 2022
• Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU after the 2021 season because he knew in his heart that he’d be able to recruit the type of top-end talent to LSU necessary to win a national title. The funny part about that was that Notre Dame had a much better class than the Tigers for the majority of the cycle. Then Kelly and his staff closed. LSU’s class is currently No. 7 and includes five top-100 players. Ten of the 25 players are from Louisiana. This is a very solid class, but Kelly and his staff also know there is another gear LSU can reach. I wondered if Kelly would have a hard time transitioning to the South. Now I go into the next cycle anticipating his recruiting results being even better.
• Florida’s 2023 class ranks No. 13 nationally and has no five-star prospect. If you would have told that to Florida fans before the year, they’d probably be pretty upset with Napier. But when you peel back the curtain, there’s more to the story. Florida signed 18 blue-chip prospects and its average player rating is 92.34, which is higher than eight of the teams ahead of it in the rankings. The Gators also found a way to sign four-star quarterback Jaden Rashada of Pittsburg (Calif.) High, who had a pretty hectic recruitment. Florida’s class certainly isn’t top-heavy, but when you consider that the lowest-rated player Napier signed was ranked No. 630, you have an appreciation for the quality the Gators are bringing in. Florida will eventually need to add some five-star love into the equation if it wants to compete with Alabama and Georgia, but I think this was a really solid first class.
• Miami suffered the biggest blow of the early signing period when five-star cornerback Cormani McClain of Lakeland (Fla.) High opted not to sign. He’s flirting with Colorado, which we’ll get into later. Still, Cristobal has the No. 4 class, headlined by two five-star offensive line prospects and five other top-125 players. The Hurricanes would love to hold onto McClain — who is scheduled to announce his destination on Jan. 15. — but there is no question that there was an uptick in Miami’s recruiting results. In last year’s cycle, Miami finished with the No. 13 class and signed only two top-100 players. That’s what you cut the checks for when hiring a coach.
• Everyone anticipated Deion Sanders was going to make a huge early splash and bring a tidal wave of flips to finish off the 2023 class. That didn’t happen, but he did make some tangible progress. Colorado signed four-star running back Dylan Edwards of Derby (Kansas) High (flipped from Notre Dame), four-star receiver Omarion Miller of Vivian (La.) North Caddo (flipped from Nebraska) and four-star receiver Adam Hopkins of Thomasville (Ga.) Thomas County Central (flipped from Auburn). That’s three blue-chippers — three more than were in the class prior to Sanders’ arrival. The real fireworks, I believe, are going to happen in the transfer portal between now and the beginning of the season. I also cannot wait to see what Sanders can accomplish with an entire cycle. He has a chance to be the first coach to come through the ranks in an untraditional manner and flip recruiting on its head.
• I still can’t stop thinking about how Texas A&M signed 18 top-100 players in last year’s cycle. That number honestly doesn’t even seem possible. Unfortunately for the Aggies, they lead the country in most players in the transfer portal with 27. The good news for Texas A&M is that the vast majority of those players aren’t from last year’s class, which keeps the nucleus in tact for the future build.
• Texas A&M’s 2023 class includes only 17 signees, but five are top-100 players. The result is a class that currently ranks No. 12 nationally. Texas A&M also added two former top-50 recruits in the portal in cornerbacks Tony Grimes from North Carolina and Sam McCall from Florida State. There’s a lot in flux in Aggieland, but it’s far from a dumpster fire if Jimbo Fisher can get things under control.
• Michigan beat Ohio State and made the College Football Playoff two years in a row. That’s quite the program build for Jim Harbaugh, who — for the second consecutive year — is flirting with NFL jobs. Michigan’s 2023 class is, frankly, bad when compared to the profile of the program. The Wolverines haven’t signed one top-100 player in a class that ranks No. 17 nationally.
• That said, Michigan is the perfect case study for how the portal may neutralize poor recruiting results in the future. The Wolverines have added seven transfers to their roster in the offseason, most of whom will have an immediate impact. I still think that Harbaugh, if he is around, needs to figure out a way to recruit high schoolers at a higher level if he wants to win a national championship.
• I’ve been writing for years that Clemson would decline as a program if it didn’t keep up in recruiting with the likes of Georgia and Alabama. That’s not to say the Tigers would fall off the map, but they would slip from being legit national title contenders every year regardless of roster turnover. It’s beginning to happen now, and Clemson’s 2023 class, though solid, doesn’t compare to the programs it has beaten in the Playoff in the past 10 years. Dabo Swinney is a genius of a talent evaluator, so I know Clemson will always be good, but the No. 10 class with only six top-125 players isn’t going to cut it in today’s landscape.
• South Carolina’s class ranks No. 16 overall and ranks No. 7 in the SEC, just in case you want a refresher on why that conference stands above everyone else.
• Auburn is such an attractive job that it can be a complete wreck for the majority of the cycle and still finish with the No. 20 class. Some of that was the hiring of Hugh Freeze — a recruiting-minded head coach — but much of that speaks to the foundation on which Auburn sits. I’d bet money the Tigers find a way back in the top 10 a year from now.
• UCLA is the lowest-rated class, at No. 37, that includes a five-star prospect. That five-star prospect was a big one in quarterback Dante Moore of Detroit (Mich.) Martin Luther King, who spent the previous six months committed to Oregon.
• Though it was a tough ending to the season in the Rose Bowl for Utah, here is a shoutout to Kyle Whittingham’s program for signing the best class in program history. Utah has six blue-chip prospects signed in a class that ranks No. 22. Utah spent much of the past decade ranked somewhere in the mid-30s or lower.
• Penn State signed a solid class at No. 15, with three top-100 players. But the Nittany Lions signed five of the top eight players in Pennsylvania, and that will pay dividends down the line.
(Photo of Brent Venables: Brian Bahr / Getty Images)
