NIL has helped spread the wealth … of talent

Everything is fluid in football recruiting but as of Tuesday, less than 24 hours before recruits begin signing binding letters of intent with their chosen programs, the Rivals.com rankings was somewhat historic.

The top 10 recruits in the country were committed to 10 different schools.

That’s never happened before, at least not since Rivals began ranking recruits back in 2006.

Obviously there are no guarantees that these pledges hold through signing day. The 10 to 10 phenomenon only came into place because Dylan Raiola, the nation’s top-ranked quarterback and second overall recruit, flipped from Georgia to Nebraska on Monday.

In the past, top recruits tended to bunch together, usually to sign with one of the hot programs of the moment or a steady national champion contender. In 2020, for example, Clemson signed three of the top four recruits alone.

This year top 10 players are committed to Ohio State, Nebraska, Missouri, Alabama, Auburn, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas and Miami.

Great players are going to continue to flock to certain programs. Nothing is going to change that. The top-heavy nature of college football also isn’t a new problem. The sport was impossibly top heavy for decades, with only a few legitimately competitive programs each year.

But that’s maybe less so now because it’s not just the top 10 players who are spreading out.

Georgia, for instance, still has 10 top 100 recruits committed. Last year, though, the Bulldogs signed 12 and Alabama 14 of the top 100. From 2017 to 2021, the final five cycles prior to NIL (name, image and likeness), the five most successful recruiting schools that year signed an average of 45.4 of the top 100 recruits, per the 247 Composite rankings. If you stretch back a decade, it’s 43.7.

Currently 98 of the top 100 are committed and the five schools with the most top…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/top-10-recruits-10-different-schools-nil-has-helped-spread-the-wealth–of-talent-152647926.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2023-12-19 15:26:47

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