Want To Win The National Championship? Start By Signing Top-10 Recruiting Classes
By David Glenn
During college football’s national signing period each year, as plenty of fanatics immerse themselves in the increasingly high-tech drama and even some New Year’s Eve-style celebrations, many skeptical fans shrug their shoulders in disinterest, others in disdain.
If those folks tell you that there are plenty of five-star high school recruits who flop at the college level, or that there are lots of less heralded prep players who become college stars, offer your agreement and/or congratulations. On those claims, the recruiting skeptics are certainly correct.
However, recent history suggests that if you throw recruiting rankings out the window entirely, you will end up looking clueless in the process.
As this year’s early signing period (which started Wednesday and already includes a large majority of the expected signees at most FBS schools) continues through Friday, with national championship coach Mack Brown leading UNC to the cusp of a top-10 recruiting ranking with the Class of 2022, consider this:
The last 20 national champions in college football (see chart) all had at least one top-10 recruiting class on their rosters when they won it all, and 19 of them had multiple top-10 classes on hand as they raised the trophy.
Those are just a couple of cute little factoids, and they certainly don’t guarantee any team future success, but they’re worthy of everyone’s consideration as a foundational element at least once a year.
While the Class of 2022 team recruiting rankings won’t be “final” for another three months or so, because the modern football recruiting calendar also includes a midyear junior college transfer window (Dec. 15-Jan. 15 this time) and a second chance (Feb. 2-April 1, 2022) for high school seniors to sign their national letters of intent, it’s worth a quick glance at this year’s early top 10.
According to the 247Sports Composite, which averages the team rankings of multiple football recruiting services, this year’s preliminary top 10 consists of (in order) Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, UNC, Michigan and Oklahoma.
“This is possibly the best recruiting class in our school’s history,” Brown said Wednesday. “It’s a tremendous class.”
For Brown and the Tar Heels, this year’s 17-man group projects as a third consecutive top-15 recruiting class. The Heels were ranked #14 in both 2020 and 2021 in the 247Sports Composite.
“Not only is it one of the best athletic classes in the country, it’s one of the best academic classes in the country,” Brown said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before, but every player that we signed is a team captain. We’re needing leadership, we want that academic confidence, and all of those things are in here.”
UNC’s impending 2022 arrivals are a part of the best three-year stretch of recruiting rankings in Chapel Hill since the 1990s, when Brown gradually built Carolina to the point where it had two of the best seasons in program history, in 1996 (10-2, #10 final ranking) and 1997 (11-1, #4 in final coaches poll).
“These young guys can see where we’re headed,” Brown said.
Obviously, players still need to be coached, retained and developed for recruiting success to translate into on-the-field success.
At the same time, there’s no avoiding the top-10 recruiting theme behind every FBS national champion of the 21st century. Side note: If Alabama, Georgia or Michigan wins this year’s national title, the streak will continue. Only if Cincinnati (a heavy underdog) wins it all will the streak finally end.
In the five national signing periods leading up to Alabama’s victory over Clemson in the 2015 College Football Playoff championship game, coach Nick Saban welcomed to the Crimson Tide recruiting classes with these consensus national rankings: #1 (2011), #1 (2012), #1 (2013), #1 (2014), #1 (2015).
Yes, the reigning national champion of college football consisted entirely of players from five consecutive consensus No. 1 classes while winning one (actually, two) of its other recent national titles.
Cinderella? Not.
When Ohio State won the Big Ten championship, then the national title, after the 2014 season, coach Urban Meyer was in just his third season with the Buckeyes. But his three recruiting classes in Columbus all were ranked in the top five nationally: #5 (2012), #2 (2013), #3 (2014). Even the group from the year before Meyer’s arrival (#6 in 2011) was very impressive.
Cinderella? Don’t bother.
When Florida State captured the ACC championship, then the national title, after the 2013 season, then-coach Jimbo Fisher was riding a similar wave of highly regarded groups: #8 (2010), #2 (2011), #4 (2012), #11 (2013).
Cinderella? Stay home.
Dabo Swinney went 19-15 in his first two and a half seasons as Clemson’s head coach, after initially taking over as interim coach, when Tommy Bowden was dismissed in the middle of the 2008 season.
As Clemson’s recruiting results improved under Swinney, a charismatic, high-energy and personable leader, so did the Tigers’ results on the field. His 2010 class, signed between 9-5 and 6-7 campaigns, ranked outside the top 25 in the consensus national rankings.
Here are the Tigers’ consensus recruiting rankings since 2011, which represents the turning point of their program under Swinney: #10 (2011), #20 (2012), #15 (2013), #16 (2014), #9 (2015), #11 (2016), #16 (2017), #7 (2018), #10 (2019), #3 (2020).
Over the past 10 seasons, Swinney is 120-17, for a stunning .876 winning percentage. After Clemson had zero ACC football titles from 1992-2010, the Tigers won in 2011, then won six straight from 2015-20.
Pending the bowl result for the Tigers (9-3 so far this year), the program may be able to sustain its current streaks of 10 consecutive years with 10 or more victories and 10 straight top-25 poll finishes.
Studies by ACCSports.com and a handful of others in recent decades repeatedly have determined that basketball recruiting rankings are more accurate than football recruiting rankings.
Did you know that 90 percent of the top-ranked high school seniors in basketball end up playing in the NBA? That’s a remarkably strong correlation. Further down the rankings, that correlation loses strength, and eventually it goes away entirely. That happens in football, too.
What else do high placements in the football recruiting rankings NOT mean? Well, that’s a long list.
They do not mean, for example, that you can coach even a little bit.
They do not mean you will retain or develop your players, two things that are crucial to the success of any college program.
They do not mean your signees will avoid serious injuries, or stay off the police blotter, or fend off homesickness, or remain academically eligible. Heck, there’s no guarantee they’ll even qualify for enrollment. Some schools regularly lose a significant chunk of their classes to the NCAA Clearinghouse.
They definitely don’t mean you have a special eye for talent, or for finding the right fits for your offensive and defensive systems.
And they certainly don’t guarantee that you’ll win a lot of games on Saturdays.
Of course, if your ultimate goal is to compete for the national championship and win it, 20 straight years of recent history suggest that while coaching, retaining and developing are wonderful and important things, eventually you’re going to have to mix in some top-10 recruiting classes, too.
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
The founding editor and long-time owner of the ACC Sports Journal and ACCSports.com, he also has contributed to the Durham Herald-Sun, ESPN Radio, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Raycom Sports, SiriusXM and most recently The Athletic. From 1999-2020, he also hosted the David Glenn Show, which became the largest sports radio program in the history of the Carolinas, syndicated in more than 300 North Carolina cities and towns, plus parts of South Carolina and Virginia.
Comments on Chapelboro are moderated according to our Community Guidelines