National Signing Day Conference and Team Rankings

National Signing Day has ended and except for a few players unable to fax their Letters of Intent because of today's snowstorm (which they will do at a later time), the 2013-2014 college football recruiting season has been completed.  According to the recruitment rankings on ESPN, Scout.com, Rivals.com, and 24/7 Sports, the Alabama Crimson Tide has once again signed the #1 class in the country.  Louisiana State signed the consensus #2 class while the rest of the top ten varied among different teams.  All four ranking services put Ohio State, Florida State, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Florida, and Auburn at various places on their lists but there was some disagreement over the remaining two positions.  Here is how each ranking service appeared at the end of the day:


Scout.com:  #1 Alabama, #2 LSU, #3 Florida State, #4 Tennessee, #5 Ohio State, #6 Notre Dame, #7 Texas A&M, #8 Auburn, #9 Florida, and #10 Southern California. 

24/7 Sports:  #1 Alabama, #2 LSU, #3 Ohio State, #4 Florida State, #5 Texas A&M, #6 Auburn, #7 Tennessee, #8 Georgia, #9 Florida, and #10 Notre Dame.

Rivals.com:  #1 Alabama, #2 LSU, #3 Ohio State, #4 Florida State, #5 Tennessee, #6 Texas A&M, #7 Florida, #8 Georgia, #9 Auburn, #10 Southern California. 

ESPN:  #1 Alabama, #2 LSU, #3 Florida State, #4 Texas A&M, #5 Tennessee, #6 Florida, #7 Ohio State, #8 Auburn, #9 Georgia, #10 Miami (FL). 


In all four lists, it appears that teams from the Southeastern Conference make up the majority of the top ten recruiting classes.  The Big Ten and the Atlantic Coast Conference each has one team on all four lists:  Ohio State and current National Champion Florida State.  Southern California represents the PAC-12, but the Trojans appear in the top ten on only two lists.  The same situation applies to Notre Dame, which is #6 on Scout.com and #10 on 24/7 Sports.  Miami (FL) reached #10 on ESPN's list and regretfully, the BIG XII is not represented in the top ten on any of these lists.  In fact, the school that signed the best class in the BIG XII, Oklahoma, is only ranked as high as #13 on both Scout.com and ESPN.  24/7 Sports has the Sooners at #14 while Rivals.com puts them at #15. 

Based on these top ten rankings, it seems like the Southeastern Conference has a substantial recruiting advantage over all the other FBS-level conferences.  One can also see how the SEC compares to the other conferences in recruiting by looking at this table from Scout.com:

Conference Rankings

Rank	Conf	Avg Commits	Leader	Avg Points	Top 100				Off	Def	SpT	HS	JC	Avg
1.	SEC	24.5	1. Alabama	3280	37	21	121	173	164	172	7	308	35	3.38
2.	Big 12	24.8	13. Oklahoma	2328	7	4	38	159	125	121	2	196	52	2.97
3.	Pac-12	22.0	10. USC	2294	16	6	51	162	117	144	3	234	30	3.06
4.	ACC	23.3	3. Florida State	2152	17	8	46	209	168	151	7	318	8	2.98
5.	Big Ten	21.9	5. Ohio State	2084	17	3	53	183	150	144	12	286	20	2.93
6.	Indep	31.3	6. Notre Dame	1610	4	1	16	23	58	64	3	123	2	2.37
7.	AAC	23.5	46. South Florida	846	1	0	2	83	131	123	4	236	22	2.24
8.	MWC	24.1	69. San Diego State	740	1	0	1	56	144	141	4	233	56	2.13
9.	Conf USA	23.2	64. Marshall	607	0	0	1	43	153	145	4	253	49	2.03
10.	MAC	18.3	54. Western Michigan	584	0	0	0	52	119	113	6	228	10	2.16
11.	Sun Belt	21.0	92. Texas State	443	0	0	0	15	114	112	5	168	63	1.84

I will end tonight's post about National Signing Day with a yes or no question:  Is there a problem with the college football recruiting system?  If yes, then explain what it is in the comment section.