Power 4 Conference Class of 2025 Recruiting Rankings
How does every P4 team's 2025 recruiting class rank within their conference?
With Early Signing Day about a month away, it is worth taking a break to expand from our usual weekly roundups to look at every Power 4 conference in totality. We’ll share the rankings within each Power 4 conference, talk about the best classes in each conference, and discuss what might be driving the disappointing classes by conference.
ACC
The ACC has been dominated by its two most historically successful programs this cycle in Notre Dame and Miami. Neither has a 5 star this cycle, but their combined 28 4 stars this cycle outranks any other group of teams in the conference. With both teams trending to make the CFP this season, there is plenty of reason to be optimistic for both fanbases. Georgia Tech, Clemson, and SMU have also had respectable cycles to make up a strong second tier of the conference. SMU stands out to me because of how much they lag behind in terms of getting blue chip talent comparatively.
Florida State and North Carolina must qualify for the biggest disappointments of any team in the conference this cycle. FSU’s on-field woes with their 1-8 record after failing to make the CFP in 2023 as undefeated ACC champions have been talked to death, but it seems to have followed them onto the recruiting trail. Perliminary research has indicated they’ve struggled in Miami, but I have to look more deeply into it. North Carolina’s struggles seem to be more specifically about the uncertainty surrounding Mack Brown’s future. He is 73 years old and Adam Gorney at Rivals has reported that recruits have been receiving pitches from rival programs on the topic. Since UNC has seen three commitments flip in as many weeks (3 star TE Logan Farrell, 4 star TE Marshall Pritchett, and 3 star LB Anthony Kruah), it seems like the pitch is working.
Big 12
On the whole, the conference really struggles to bring in top talent. They are the only conference without a single 5 star commitment in this class. I want to draw particular attention to Colorado. They are tied with the most blue chip commitments in the conference (5) but have a bottom 10 recruiting class amongst all Power 4 teams. How is that possible? Simple! They only have 10 commitments, tied for the 2nd-fewest of any P4 team. That severely limits your ability to bring in talent as a program and is a recipe for disaster in a roster construction sense.
I also find BYU interesting. Their recruiting is extremely poor this cycle, and my initial guess for why this might be the case is that their honor code makes recruiting talented non-LDS recruits more difficult. But you don’t see this sort of downgrade in recruiting for other P4 schools which are institutionally or culturally religious (Notre Dame, Baylor, TCU, Clemson, etc). It’s interesting that this seems to be unique to BYU.
Big Ten
The Big Ten really is two conferences wrapped in one. There are 6 schools who can recruit at a CFP-contender level (Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, USC, Oregon, and Washington) and then there is everyone else. Oregon in particular has impressed this cycle with the highest blue chip ratio of any class in the nation. Michigan also has been building up some momentum over the past week or so.
On the other end of the spectrum, Purdue has had a wretched run of things in this cycle. They are tied with Colorado for the 2nd-fewest commitments of any Power 4 team (10). I would suspect that even if Purdue head coach Ryan Walters makes it through this season, he will not be long for this world with the Boilermakers. Also worth paying attention here to Michigan State under new head coach Jonathan Smith. They historically have not recruited as well as their in-state rivals, but not 30-places-lower-than-Wisconsin worse! Watch this space.
SEC
It’s ridiculous just how much highly-rated talent goes to the SEC. All but 4 of the teams in the conference have a top-25 recruiting class in the Power 4. Half of the conference is in the top 15! Absurd. This is a result of the southeast being so football-talent rich - and recruiting services being able to see so many of these players in summer camp services and the like - but it is still wild to see on paper.
Alabama, LSU, and Auburn all interest me as positive examples in the conference. The 2025 class at Alabama will be the last one to have any of Nick Saban’s fingerprints on it, and Kalen DeBoer has done a great job to maintain it. I am interested to see what a totally Saban-less Alabama recruiting class looks like in 2026. LSU is interesting to me because despite all of the cringe in his recruiting videos, it seems to be working! Auburn is interesting because although Hugh Freeze has had similar on-field results to Bryan Harson, it has been a completely different story on the recruiting trail.
On the opposite end of the conference though, Florida and Vanderbilt have been through the ringer. Florida’s struggles are somewhat understandable. Their head coach, Billy Napier, is on the hot seat, they’ve had a disappointing season, and they haven’t finished a season north of 0.500 in half a decade. They’re recruiting poorly compared to the rest of their conference, but its understandable why. Vanderbilt’s struggles are far more difficult to come to terms with. In the midst of their best season in a decade and a head coach unlikely to leave the program they have the smallest recruiting class in the Power 4 with 8 commitments. Tennessee has 7 commitments for the class of 2026! There also doesn’t seem to be any reporters giving reason for optimism moving forward either. Unless things change quickly, it seems like fans of the Dores may just have to take solace in their cinderella season and not think too much about the future.
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