On Monday, I introduced adjusted recruiting rankings for 2024 accounting for early enrollees from January who then transferred in the spring portal window.
To refer to the modified list as “recruiting rankings” isn’t quite correct because signing high school players and even securing early enrollee transfers are two different processes. However, as early enrollee transfers don’t even have a season of college outcomes to go on, they differ from what most people consider to be a “transfer.” There might not be a better phrase than “adjusted rankings” to describe this strange midway ground.
Having said that, when you consider all true freshman and not just traditional signees, UF’s 2024 class jumps from No. 13 in the 247Sports Composite recruiting rankings to No. 8 in the adjusted rankings.
I highlighted at the end of the piece that one of Florida’s two early enrollee transfers, corner Jameer Grimsley, was a guy that the Gators were a finalist for as a high school recruit. He signed with Alabama, but then he chose to leave after Nick Saban retired. As he’s from Tampa and had relationships with Billy Napier and staff, UF was in a prime position to secure his services.
Today, I am going to break down the results of running the same process on 2023 recruiting classes. Basically I looked at the top 15 teams in the ’23 Composite rankings, inspected their signing classes for transfers out, and looked over both the 2023 and 2024 transfer classes for guys coming in who were ’23 high school or JUCO players.
Consider this purely a what-if with ratings: how would things look if the signing classes consisted of only the players they signed who are still around and then class of ’23 signees from elsewhere who transferred in? Let me give you an example to make it clear.
Florida has only lost DT Will Norman from its 2023 signing class. In the winter portal period, the Gators picked up LB Grayson Howard. He signed out of high school in South Carolina’s ’23 class. Then in the spring portal period, UF landed Cormani McClain. He signed out of high school in Colorado’s ’23 class.
In light of those changes, I went to the 247Sports class calculator for 2023 Florida. I removed Norman and all of the incoming transfers for that cycle to get just the list of high school signees who are still in Gainesville. I then added Howard and McClain to see what the rating would look like if they had signed out of high school.
I then repeated this process for the other 14 teams in the top 15 of the rankings.
Is this a 100% bulletproof way to look at how transfers in and out have shaped the 2023 classes for the teams I studied? No, not completely. Even just a year on, some players have already shown their high school ratings to likely be off considerably. That’s why 247Sports re-ranks even players this recently out of high school when they transfer. But also, these players are still just a year out of high school. They have time to live up to expectations.
Before giving you the newly adjusted rankings, a couple of things stood out.
One is that the Gators are the only team in the top 15 to have lost only a single ’23 signee to the portal. Tennessee, Clemson, and Penn State are the only ones who’ve lost just two. Even a single year later, losing three or more signees to transfer is not unusual — and only Alabama and Texas A&M among these programs have changed head coaches since the 2023 classes were signed. Player movement really is up that much.
The other notable thing is the dynamic I mentioned above with Grimsley. Both Howard and McClain were priority targets for Florida. Both chose to sign elsewhere for, let’s just say, very different reasons. And both then ended up in the portal for, again, very different reasons.
Nevertheless, Napier leveraged his and his staff’s history with those players as a part of the process of bringing them aboard the second time around. You’d rather these guys sign out of high school, of course, but rare is the program that signs literally everyone they truly want. Building and maintaining good relationships even with players who sign elsewhere initially can increasingly bear fruit in the unlimited transfer era.
So, with only one signee gone but a couple of very highly rated transfers coming in, you probably surmised that Florida rose in the rankings in light of the adjustments. You would be correct.
| Team | Adj Rtg | Adj Rk | Orig Rtg | Orig Rk | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 319.09 | 1 | 328 | 1 | -8.91 |
| Georgia | 315.68 | 2 | 312.58 | 2 | 3.1 |
| Texas | 303.62 | 3 | 306.31 | 3 | -2.69 |
| Ohio State | 289.02 | 4 | 290.72 | 4 | -1.7 |
| Tennessee | 284.7 | 5 | 277 | 10 | 7.7 |
| Texas A&M | 281.3 | 6 | 268.85 | 15 | 12.45 |
| Florida | 280.43 | 7 | 271.43 | 13 | 9 |
| Oregon | 277.77 | 8 | 278.44 | 9 | -0.67 |
| Oklahoma | 275.54 | 9 | 288.15 | 5 | -12.61 |
| Miami | 274.56 | 10 | 284.64 | 7 | -10.08 |
| Clemson | 270.38 | 11 | 273.39 | 11 | -3.01 |
| Notre Dame | 264.17 | 12 | 272.74 | 12 | -8.57 |
| Penn State | 263.43 | 13 | 270.1 | 14 | -6.67 |
| LSU | 255.36 | 14 | 288.7 | 6 | -33.34 |
| USC | 254.95 | 15 | 280.44 | 8 | -25.49 |
The Gators are No. 13 in the 2023 Composite recruiting rankings, but with adjustments they rose all the way up to No. 7. The only team to jump them was Texas A&M, which leaped all the way from No. 15 to No. 6.
The Aggies pulled that off by losing just three of their mid-to-lower rated recruits from the 2023 cycle, and then Mike Elko landed five class of ’23 transfers. CB Dezz Ricks, a 5-star in high school, accounts for about ten points of TAMU’s gain of 12.45. A whopping 31 players left College Station after last season, and Elko brought in 28 transfers to help compensate. If anything, it’s a bit of a surprise he didn’t have more class of ’23 transfers coming in.
I won’t narrate the table for you, but UF easily could’ve jumped from No. 13 to No. 6 if Jimbo didn’t get himself fired or Elko didn’t have to secure more than two dozen transfers. Each team is its own story in that way.
Take the two biggest fallers. LSU dropped so much because I counted a whopping ten players from the ’23 class as already being gone. USC dropped so much on just four departures because two of them, including a tight end who signed but then chose an LDS mission over going to college right away, were mid 4-stars. A third loss was 5-star QB Malachi Nelson, who is now at Boise State. There is more than one way to see a program fall after adjustments.
There’s no doubt about it: you’d rather Napier sign larger high school classes and rely less on the portal. A great corner that the Gators just missed out on won’t always come available on account of a legend retiring.
But again, it’s hard to sign everyone you want to in the cutthroat world of SEC recruiting. Napier’s relationship-focused recruiting method has helped get the Gators three of their biggest ones that got away in Grimsley, Howard, and McClain once they ended up back on the market.
The transfer portal can be chaotic and unpredictable, and Napier’s preferred deliberate method of scouting is not a great match for it. Working ever harder on recruiting high school players can help get around that limitation. Napier didn’t have to do a deep dive last winter on Howard, for instance, because he already had done that work. A lot of schools shied away from McClain after Deion Sanders’s public comments about him, but Napier and staff could better understand the player and situation than most because they’d spent so much time with McClain already.
If Napier can keep his job for the long haul, a model for navigating the unlimited transfer era is emerging. Don’t skimp on high school recruiting, because merely retaining players is a challenge these days and guys are more If they knew ahead of time what to expect, they were more likely to stay. Furthermore, it may still be worthwhile to maintain contact with players who appear to be planning to sign elsewhere because they may reappear.
If someone can figure out how to make this method function, it’s a promising one, as the tweaks indicate that Florida has advanced to having a top ten roster of players from both the 2023 and 2024 cycles through player retention and clever incoming transfers.
