I had to take a step back from myself out of the Misery Puddle this place has become in the last couple days and start to compile some facts and data.
Full disclosure, I'm not saying people shouldn't be concerned, I'm not saying everyone should say everything is lollipops and ice cream, etc. In the 2026 class, we've gone after a ton of big fish, and recently, we've missed on **** near every one of them. So, I get the mood, genunely.
Full disclosure #2...it's July. Again, see the point above, I get it. But until this class is signed, for the positives and negatives, let's just try to have some perspective.
Full disclosure #3....this does NOT take into account attrition, on-field performance once the kids arrive, etc. Obviously this is what it's all about, but right now, we're all smacking our wives around and kicking our dogs because the 2026 class is going to cause the collapse of Western Civilization, and obviously we have no idea how any of these kids will pan out. So this is purely recruiting rankings, which is all we care about in July for an upcoming class.
I looked at the last 3 classes, on the composite, and averaged them. Here is the average of the last 3 classes for every school up to where we stand.
1. UGA - 1.67
2. Alabama - 2.00
3. Texas - 3.33
4. Ohio State - 4.33
5. Oregon - 5.67
6. LSU - 7.33
7. Miami - 8.33
8. Oklahoma - 10.33
9. Notre Dame - 11.00
10. Florida - 11.00
18. FSU - 17.00
So there are exactly six schools in the entire country who have recruited better classes than Miami over the last 3 cycles. Only 7 schools have an average class ranking in the single digits over the past 3 cycles, Miami is one of them.
The mopery has even gotten to me a little bit in the sense that I'm starting to really examine Miami's recruiting ceiling. But look at this. Is there anyone here who thinks there's any coach on the planet we could have hired who would have us ABOVE UGA, Alabama, Texas, or Taint at this point? Show of hands? Who has a name for me that, if hired the same day Mario was, would have us in the top 4? I'm going with zero point zero humans. So....is this really that terrible? Genuinely, I was curious myself, it's been a long time since I looked at this data like this, so I wanted to see where we stood. This kind of reels me in a little bit.
Now, one final mope before I go, the 2025 class was the worst of the three. And 2026, RIGHT NOW, looks to be about the same. So again, I genuinely do get the pessimism. I don't think people are crazy for shaking their heads a little bit here. But let's use a tiny bit of perspective and look big picture. Let's see where this class ends up in December and we can go from there. Because though the 3 real cycles this dude has had here, #7 is pretty **** elite if you ask me. Every single one of those programs above us have been WILDLY more successful than we have in the past 20 years.
