2024 Race to 300

[NJshoreCane]

Late summer during 'panic time', I said i was expecting "a pair of 7's", meaning #7 finishes 2 years straight.
#'s 3, 4, 5, or 6 is Tier 1B level and is a great class.
For the "average per" guys, we are top-10, which is fine with me considering only 1 other program has more top-100 guys than we do.

 

[NJshoreCane]

Mario and his coordinators are not Willie bad lol.

But yeah there are exceptions to the talent wins rule. Jimbo at A&M and Jimbo/Taggart at FSU are two. So one coach had an influence on both those. Mack Brown recruited well at TX but couldn’t sustain the winning. USC has popped its head up once or twice since Carroll but done nothing and of course we had the Coker years.

Hard to find too many other examples of teams recruiting back to back top classes and still losing a lot of games. And I just don’t see Mario as a guy that fits in the mold of those guys above. He’s more like Harbaugh to me even though it’s taking him longer to get there. Better recruiter worse game day coach.

We do know Mario can win a P5 (P4) conference championship.
The question is, is that his ceiling?

 

[lfoliva9988]

The final rankings have been updated from all the sites now.

There shouldn’t be much movement at all next week for traditional signing day, as there are only TWO kids who are both unsigned and uncommitted in the top 250. That’s insane when you think about it if you’ve been following recruiting for as long as I have, but that’s another discussion.

Miami will likely finish with 291 points. So the race to 300 officially falls slightly short, but that’s not the takeaway. The takeaway is that Miami has moved into and will likely finish with the #3 class in the country, behind only Georgia and Alabama. Good ******* lord what an effort by the staff.

I went back over the last 10 classes, so starting with 2015, to see how these numbers match up along with how many programs have stacked the classes we have in back to back years. First of all, here are the TOTAL number of classes higher than 291 points in the last 10 years:

2015 — Bama & USC
2016 — Bama, LSU, and FSU
2017 — Bama, Taint, UGA, USC, Michigan & FSU
2018 — UGA, Texas, Taint & USC
2019 — Bama & UGA
2020 — UGA, Bama, Clemson, Taint & LSU
2021 — Bama, Taint, LSU, UGA & Clemson
2022 — A&M, Bama, UGA, & Taint
2023 — Bama, UGA, & Texas
2024 — UGA & Bama

That’s it. So over the last 10 years, Miami has just signed the 37th best class overall. If you remove Bama and UGA, only 19 classes have been higher by any other schools. (side note…anyone know why Bama and UGA are so good every year? Can’t put my finger on it)

And truthfully, to really get into the elite stratosphere, you need to stack at least 2 classes back to back. Miami finished with 291 in 2024 and 284.6 in 2023. Here are the only schools over the last 10 years not named Bama, UGA, or Ohio State to have two consecutive classes finish with 285 points or better:

FSU 2015/2016
LSU 2016/2017
USC 2017/2018
Texas 2018/2019
Clemson 2020/2021
LSU 2020/2021
Texas 2022/2023
Texas 2023/2024
Miami 2023/2024

What an incredible 2 year haul. Honestly, this even beats my wildest expectations, and Mario was #1 on my board simply for his recruiting prowess. Obviously. But this is truly mind-blowing. There have only been 8 teams (other than the other tier of Bama/UGA/Taint) who have stacked consecutive classes as good as Miami in the past TEN YEARS.

Now let’s go win some football games with this ****nal.

awesome post!! Thanks for breaking it down and being soo clear and concise!!

Just WIN Mario!!! He does that and we'll go on a recruiting run that Miami has never had before

 

[DTP]

Mario and his coordinators are not Willie bad lol.

But yeah there are exceptions to the talent wins rule. Jimbo at A&M and Jimbo/Taggart at FSU are two. So one coach had an influence on both those. Mack Brown recruited well at TX but couldn’t sustain the winning. USC has popped its head up once or twice since Carroll but done nothing and of course we had the Coker years.

Hard to find too many other examples of teams recruiting back to back top classes and still losing a lot of games. And I just don’t see Mario as a guy that fits in the mold of those guys above. He’s more like Harbaugh to me even though it’s taking him longer to get there. Better recruiter worse game day coach.

Texas also recruited at a really high level for years before finally breaking through with Sark. UCLA for a while was consistently getting top 10 classes and going 5-7 on the field a few years back. Tennessee too.

 

[passitback]

Late summer during 'panic time', I said i was expecting "a pair of 7's", meaning #7 finishes 2 years straight.
#'s 3, 4, 5, or 6 is Tier 1B level and is a great class.
For the "average per" guys, we are top-10, which is fine with me considering only 1 other program has more top-100 guys than we do.

Love our class. Hope it continues to get better every season.


Average per > overall class ranking

Quality > quantity

I prefer smaller classes with higher average per than larger classes with a higher overall ranking, especially with the portal.

 

[NJshoreCane]

Love our class. Hope it continues to get better every season.


Average per > overall class ranking

Quality > quantity

I prefer smaller classes with higher average per than larger classes with a higher overall ranking, especially with the portal.

Got it.
The only drawback to the year’s approach is that there will have to be more roster maneuvering in the spring.

If we waited ‘till next year on a kicker, and never offered Russell, Minaya, Frédérique, and Francavilla, our average per would be at 92.46.
That’s good for #4 in ave per.
Add (minus) Wheatley and where at # 3 in ave per at 92.77…with a class still at #6. That’s why I mentioned #3-#6 in my post.
I would be good with that too.

We do have quality as well.
If you consider top-100 as quality, only UGA has more quality than we do.

With that, our class is what it is, whether we have the guys I listed or not.
If the coaches can keep up the portal work in the spring and somehow work the numbers come fall, I’m good.

 

[DTP]

Got it.
The only drawback to the year’s approach is that there will have to be more roster maneuvering in the spring.

If we waited ‘till next year on a kicker, and never offered Russell, Minaya, Frédérique, and Francavilla, our average per would be at 92.46.
That’s good for #4 in ave per.
Add (minus) Wheatley and where at # 3 in ave per at 92.77…with a class still at #6. That’s why I mentioned #3-#6 in my post.
I would be good with that too.

We do have quality as well.
If you consider top-100 as quality, only UGA has more quality than we do.

With that, our class is what it is, whether we have the guys I listed or not.
If the coaches can keep up the portal work in the spring and somehow work the numbers come fall, I’m good.

I also don't mind taking lower rated prospects at positions that require a lot of development. If you're going to take a mid three star kid, take a mid three star offensive lineman with good traits and try to mold him into a solid player by year three or four. Stay away from the mid three star skill position kids.

 

[passitback]

Got it.
The only drawback to the year’s approach is that there will have to be more roster maneuvering in the spring.

If we waited ‘till next year on a kicker, and never offered Russell, Minaya, Frédérique, and Francavilla, our average per would be at 92.46.
That’s good for #4 in ave per.
Add (minus) Wheatley and where at # 3 in ave per at 92.77…with a class still at #6. That’s why I mentioned #3-#6 in my post.
I would be good with that too.

We do have quality as well.
If you consider top-100 as quality, only UGA has more quality than we do.

With that, our class is what it is, whether we have the guys I listed or not.
If the coaches can keep up the portal work in the spring and somehow work the numbers come fall, I’m good.

We 100% have quality, top tier talent. I'm not disputing that. I'm not disputing anything you wrote.

I'm an average per guy, kind of like an *** man, bahahaha

You are an average class rankings guy, kind of like a dude that prefers really nice ****.

There is no other way to look at it. Best part is that are both are amazing!

 

[AllAboutTheU]

It's incredible that FSU's 205/16 recruiting haul contributed to some of their worst teams in modern history.

Overall, their recruiting in the trenches on those classes wasn’t good enough. Sweat has played his best ball in the NFL and Landon ****erson was better at Bama. They got Burns for 3 years though.

 

[RightSaidFred]

They have done a fantastic job recruiting and bringing in talent. Stack another top 5 class on top of this one and we’ll be as deep and talented as any team in America.

I think 2025 is our year when we really start to show what we are. We’ve only recruited at this level for 2 years so our most talented players are freshman and sophomore. By the time they’re juniors we’ll be a force.

 

[grover]

Texas also recruited at a really high level for years before finally breaking through with Sark. UCLA for a while was consistently getting top 10 classes and going 5-7 on the field a few years back. Tennessee too.

Coaching, evals, culture, quality across positions, quality depth, QB maturity ... all of that matters. I'm not contending otherwise. And I personally think the online scouts are front runners who have more in common with Coker than Butch in how they rank kids.

But talent kills. We lost nearly all our games by a TD. A couple more breakaway plays per game and our W/L record looks very different. Or a couple less breakdowns.