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2027 Race to 300

TwentySix said:
Jumped the gun, they just updated again.

303.47

Few notes.

Currently sitting at a 85.71% blue chip ratio. Highest in program history is 76.19% in 2025. Highest in Mario’s career is 79.17% in 2021 at Oregon.

Currently have 6 top 50 recruits committed this year. We had 7 combined in Diaz and Richt’s 6 classes. Cristobal had 8 total in his 4 Oregon classes.

If the class finished right now, we would have 13 top 50 players in Mario’s first 6 classes. We had 16 in the 13 classes before he showed up (the entire 247 era)

In Mario’s 6 classes we have a combined 67.13% blue chip ratio. The highest INDIVIDUAL class in the 13 years before he showed up was 65.22% in Richt’s final class.
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Guessing the underlined excludes 2008; does it include Seantrel Henderson in 2009?

Great tidbits, appreciate the share.

Saw an interesting argument breakout elsewhere (Reddit cfb) that Mario isn’t the top talent acquisition guy in the country. I believe he is; especially considering his portal hit rate. However, the guys he was being compared to were Kirby Smart and Ryan Day, who have higher ranked classes. Moreover, folks were saying it was hard to tell how much was Mario and how much was NIL.

To me, it’s easy to retort these claims however I doubt the masses will believe it until we stack this class to go along with our trending top 2 & not 2 ‘28 class.

Smart and Day have no notable recruiting battles won or acclaimed accolades/lore when they were assistants; Mario cemented south Florida as a pipeline for Alabama when Saban was there. He got players from all over the country of course; not just south Florida. His lore is established w/ the awards he has won. Before Miami, Mario put up numbers at pre-NIL at Oregon. So much so that USC was terrified of Cristobal recruiting in California and did not want Oregon to join the B1G w/ them.

We also see Alabama drop-off immediately after Mario leaves—in 2018, their recruiting class was ranked fifth which was the worst it had ever under Saban. Of course, that was the first full cycle with Mario not on board. ‘Bama’s machine rebooted itself shortly thereafter however that datapoint cannot be dismissed. Then, what FIU & Oregon were all doing, as far as a lack of adequate talent acquisition, before Mario got to each spot is well-documented iN addition to your stats on Miami.

The same cannot be said about UGA and Ohio State. Those were much easier to scale up while they were allowed to bagman it up with no repercussions as well. Dan Lanning has a string of top 5 classes however before Mario got to Oregon, they weren’t consistently contending for blue-chips. So he had the benefit of a machine pre-assembled like Kirby, Day, DeBoer, Venerables and Riley in reference to Oklahoma, and so forth.

So given the totality of their CVs in respect to what they walked into, I’d put Mario, Freemen, Sark (2015 USC #1 class incl), Franklin, Chesney, Stein, Summerall, and Lupoi are the top HCs when it comes to recruiting; imo. Dabo used to have the juice however he lost it. The others get top ranked classes relatively easily.
 
cookies said:
Guessing the underlined excludes 2008; does it include Seantrel Henderson in 2009?

Great tidbits, appreciate the share.

Saw an interesting argument breakout elsewhere (Reddit cfb) that Mario isn’t the top talent acquisition guy in the country. I believe he is; especially considering his portal hit rate. However, the guys he was being compared to were Kirby Smart and Ryan Day, who have higher ranked classes. Moreover, folks were saying it was hard to tell how much was Mario and how much was NIL.

To me, it’s easy to retort these claims however I doubt the masses will believe it until we stack this class to go along with our trending top 2 & not 2 ‘28 class.

Smart and Day have no notable recruiting battles won or acclaimed accolades/lore when they were assistants; Mario cemented south Florida as a pipeline for Alabama when Saban was there. He got players from all over the country of course; not just south Florida. His lore is established w/ the awards he has won. Before Miami, Mario put up numbers at pre-NIL at Oregon. So much so that USC was terrified of Cristobal recruiting in California and did not want Oregon to join the B1G w/ them.

We also see Alabama drop-off immediately after Mario leaves—in 2018, their recruiting class was ranked fifth which was the worst it had ever under Saban. Of course, that was the first full cycle with Mario not on board. ‘Bama’s machine rebooted itself shortly thereafter however that datapoint cannot be dismissed. Then, what FIU & Oregon were all doing, as far as a lack of adequate talent acquisition, before Mario got to each spot is well-documented iN addition to your stats on Miami.

The same cannot be said about UGA and Ohio State. Those were much easier to scale up while they were allowed to bagman it up with no repercussions as well. Dan Lanning has a string of top 5 classes however before Mario got to Oregon, they weren’t consistently contending for blue-chips. So he had the benefit of a machine pre-assembled like Kirby, Day, DeBoer, Venerables and Riley in reference to Oklahoma, and so forth.

So given the totality of their CVs in respect to what they walked into, I’d put Mario, Freemen, Sark (2015 USC #1 class incl), Franklin, Chesney, Stein, Summerall, and Lupoi are the top HCs when it comes to recruiting; imo. Dabo used to have the juice however he lost it. The others get top ranked classes relatively easily.
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The first year of composite rankings is 2009, so that’s where it starts.

And yeah I saw that too. I may or may not have been involved lol
 
cookies said:
Guessing the underlined excludes 2008; does it include Seantrel Henderson in 2009?

Great tidbits, appreciate the share.

Saw an interesting argument breakout elsewhere (Reddit cfb) that Mario isn’t the top talent acquisition guy in the country. I believe he is; especially considering his portal hit rate. However, the guys he was being compared to were Kirby Smart and Ryan Day, who have higher ranked classes. Moreover, folks were saying it was hard to tell how much was Mario and how much was NIL.

To me, it’s easy to retort these claims however I doubt the masses will believe it until we stack this class to go along with our trending top 2 & not 2 ‘28 class.

Smart and Day have no notable recruiting battles won or acclaimed accolades/lore when they were assistants; Mario cemented south Florida as a pipeline for Alabama when Saban was there. He got players from all over the country of course; not just south Florida. His lore is established w/ the awards he has won. Before Miami, Mario put up numbers at pre-NIL at Oregon. So much so that USC was terrified of Cristobal recruiting in California and did not want Oregon to join the B1G w/ them.

We also see Alabama drop-off immediately after Mario leaves—in 2018, their recruiting class was ranked fifth which was the worst it had ever under Saban. Of course, that was the first full cycle with Mario not on board. ‘Bama’s machine rebooted itself shortly thereafter however that datapoint cannot be dismissed. Then, what FIU & Oregon were all doing, as far as a lack of adequate talent acquisition, before Mario got to each spot is well-documented iN addition to your stats on Miami.

The same cannot be said about UGA and Ohio State. Those were much easier to scale up while they were allowed to bagman it up with no repercussions as well. Dan Lanning has a string of top 5 classes however before Mario got to Oregon, they weren’t consistently contending for blue-chips. So he had the benefit of a machine pre-assembled like Kirby, Day, DeBoer, Venerables and Riley in reference to Oklahoma, and so forth.

So given the totality of their CVs in respect to what they walked into, I’d put Mario, Freemen, Sark (2015 USC #1 class incl), Franklin, Chesney, Stein, Summerall, and Lupoi are the top HCs when it comes to recruiting; imo. Dabo used to have the juice however he lost it. The others get top ranked classes relatively easily.
Click to expand...

Can also remind those SEC and B1G dipsh!ts that they are always saying the ACC sucks and no good players want to play in the conference; so based on their own statements Cristobal has to be 10x the recruiter than the next closest guy.
 
TwentySix said:
Jumped the gun, they just updated again.

303.47

Few notes.

Currently sitting at a 85.71% blue chip ratio. Highest in program history is 76.19% in 2025. Highest in Mario’s career is 79.17% in 2021 at Oregon.

Currently have 6 top 50 recruits committed this year. We had 7 combined in Diaz and Richt’s 6 classes. Cristobal had 8 total in his 4 Oregon classes.

If the class finished right now, we would have 13 top 50 players in Mario’s first 6 classes. We had 16 in the 13 classes before he showed up (the entire 247 era)

In Mario’s 6 classes we have a combined 67.13% blue chip ratio. The highest INDIVIDUAL class in the 13 years before he showed up was 65.22% in Richt’s final class.
Click to expand...
what the actual **** lol. insanity
 
TitansHope said:
what the actual **** lol. insanity
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Yeah. I’ve posted this before but here’s the updated sheet I started tracking a couple years ago where you can see some of those trends.

IMG_4070.jpeg
 
What is the highest per-player rated class in the modern era?*


*Of course in classes of 15-20 not the one 5 star who was part of a 1 player class…..
 
TpaBayFlyFisher said:
What is the highest per-player rated class in the modern era?*


*Of course in classes of 15-20 not the one 5 star who was part of a 1 player class…..
Click to expand...
I’ll look but I remember some teams having averages in the 95s

Quickly looked at 2016-2023 and there were
95s - 4 classes
94s - 10 +

Now that was also during a different era. What we are doing today in the NIL era is on that level but I’m not sure you can say it’s all time great yet.
 
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KrazyCane said:
How the **** are we still 2nd in both 247 and compensate rankings?
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13 of A&M’s 24 commits are ranked from 3rd to 102nd in 247’s ratings. 11 A&M commits are ranked 3rd to 59th on the composite.

They are treading water tho. Already lost Ashton Whiteside to a flip to us; Kaden Henderson is visiting ND this weekend, ND was considered the frontrunner earlier in the cycle; and Frederick Ards has visited both UF and USCe recently; blue-chip DE from Orlando could easily flip to UF before the cycle is over. Kaden is a composite five-star.
 
cookies said:
Ivins additionally expects us to land the number 1 class w/ Wright’s reclassification imminent + a flip of MM and/or DJ to cement that spot.

Something interested he noted that i hadn’t realized, before USC’s 2026 recruiting class, no one from outside the SEC had the top recruiting class since Miami in 2008. Oddly enough, in 2007, USC had the top recruiting class. So in addition to the their four year national championship streak ending, the recruiting title is lost as well.

In 2011, ESPN/247 have FSU as having the number 1 recruiting class. Alabama was a close second so seems like Ivins’ statement was off a bit.

Edit: 247 has USC as the top ranked class in 2015.
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Genuinely how did Riley land that class with his current perception
 
cookies said:
Just went thru every year since the rankings started (2011) on 247, they were second five times (2013, 2014. 2017, 2018, 2021) Texas was second one time (2012), and a 2nd time after joining the SEC (2025).

FSU also had a second place finish in 2016. Clemson finished 2nd in 2020. USC had the top ranked class in 2015.
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Its also crazy bro. If you look through the 2010s, Bama was basically the #1 class every single year by a significant margin. Mario was their recruiting coordinator and assistant head coach. He took that monster up a notch.

That is what Mario is going to do. This is not some lucky class.

Mario is going to be putting out #1 classes every year for the foreseeable future.
 
TpaBayFlyFisher said:
What is the highest per-player rated class in the modern era?*


*Of course in classes of 15-20 not the one 5 star who was part of a 1 player class…..
Click to expand...
I see USC’s 2013 class w/ 12 recruits having 94.75 average. Alabama’s 2014 class (Cristobal’s first cycle) had an average of 94.15 w/ 26 commits.

Mario’s Oregon team beat this Davis Mills Headlined Stanford class in 2020. One of his best wins.
IMG_3012.jpeg


He beat this Ohio State class (the ones who stayed for their senior years) in 2021 for the best win of his coaching career so far.

IMG_3014.jpeg


And this crop of buckeyes were freshmen when that game happened. That team was ultra-loaded.



IMG_3015.jpeg


In 2022, A&M (94.23), ‘Bama (94.44), and OSU (93.81). A&M had 8 five-stars. Dan Lanning is eating off Mario’s foundation as Oregon has had the highest averages in the last two cycles: 2026 (92.21) and 2025 (93.21)
 
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