Just a thought exercise that I'm curious how others think. Rivals has thoughtfully provided the capability to look at football recruiting classes by both 'new' recruits and transfers, and then a combined ranking for the last few seasons. I was bored and looking at just the Big 12.
In 2023, KU took in 26 players with an average of 2.92 stars, which ranked them next to last. Excluding UT and OU, the range of average stars was 3.25 to 2.91. In 2024, KU's 27 players averaged 3.15 stars, behind only UCF among current conference teams. For 2025, KU's 41 players average 2.85 stars, ranking 7th (TT leads at 39 for 3.15).
What caught my attention is WVU. They have 78 new players coming in the 2025 class, averaging 2.37 stars. OSU and UA are both over 50 new players and rank in the bottom of the conference ranking.
My discussion question is, what do you think promises a better long-term outlook for a team? Is it better to take smaller classes overall, which would seem to indicate more roster stability? Or is it simply better to have higher ranked recruits each year, even if it means that you have more roster turnover potentially? KU has generally had among the smaller classes in the conference, but I think most of us are pretty optimistic about the outlook. Meanwhile, some programs that have been fairly successful, like OSU and WVU have had some of the largest recent classes but performance has probably fallen off a bit.
I think it probably depends a bit on where each program is when the trend starts, but I'm curious how others might think about this.
In 2023, KU took in 26 players with an average of 2.92 stars, which ranked them next to last. Excluding UT and OU, the range of average stars was 3.25 to 2.91. In 2024, KU's 27 players averaged 3.15 stars, behind only UCF among current conference teams. For 2025, KU's 41 players average 2.85 stars, ranking 7th (TT leads at 39 for 3.15).
What caught my attention is WVU. They have 78 new players coming in the 2025 class, averaging 2.37 stars. OSU and UA are both over 50 new players and rank in the bottom of the conference ranking.
My discussion question is, what do you think promises a better long-term outlook for a team? Is it better to take smaller classes overall, which would seem to indicate more roster stability? Or is it simply better to have higher ranked recruits each year, even if it means that you have more roster turnover potentially? KU has generally had among the smaller classes in the conference, but I think most of us are pretty optimistic about the outlook. Meanwhile, some programs that have been fairly successful, like OSU and WVU have had some of the largest recent classes but performance has probably fallen off a bit.
I think it probably depends a bit on where each program is when the trend starts, but I'm curious how others might think about this.
