The college football season has been over for about a month, but National Signing Day was just a week ago. What is the fallout from the day when recruiting becomes the biggest nationwide story in college sports? Alabama and USC and Penn State and Ohio State all made out like bandits on the recruiting trail, to the surprise of no one, but what about the other end of the spectrum and all the teams (or conferences) which fell short of their hopes and goals? Here are the foremost examples of the failures on National Signing Day 2017:
Texas Longhorns
There is no question that Texas, in terms of teams, was the biggest loser of National Signing Day. Tom Herman, the new hotshot head coach in Austin, went through a very uncomfortable press conference in which he had to rationalize the poor showing, in which his program fell out of the top 10 and even beyond the top 25. This was not expected, even though Herman did not have that much time to assemble a class after being hired and leaving the University of Houston. Texas is supposed to be a big-enough brand name that players in the state of Texas should want to play for the big state school. Clearly, Texas has a damaged reputation and must do a lot of work in the coming year to give Herman a big class in 2018. If Herman does not land that big class, he could fall into trouble, and the Longhorns will continue to chase the success which Oklahoma is and has been enjoying for some time.
Speaking of Oklahoma…
The Big 12 Conference
The Oklahoma Sooners were the only team in the Big 12 to land a top-25 recruiting class on National Signing Day, finishing at number eight. All nine other teams in the league were outside the top 25. Baylor did the best by finishing in the top 40 despite the continuous swirl of scandals and embarrassments to encircle the school. Baylor’s haul, under the circumstances, was pretty darn incredible, as new coach Matt Rhule brought along a lot of the players he had previously been targeting at Temple. Recruits are very loyal to him. Beyond Baylor, though, it’s a mess – and not just with Texas. Teams up and down the conference fell short of where they hoped. Kansas is showing strength in terms of 2018 recruiting, but 2017 was a total disaster for the Big 12, which is losing a lot of Texas-based players to Texas A&M and LSU in the SEC. That’s a big problem for the conference in the near future.
Vanderbilt Commodores
The Commodores are considering building a new football stadium and dramatically improving their facilities. A program which wants to do that sort of thing needs to be able to generate excitement and show that its football brand is growing in terms of attractiveness and visibility. In the SEC, most schools expect to finish in the top 40 because of how big a deal football is to nearly every school in the conference. Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Florida, Georgia – those programs regularly get in the top 15 and did so this year. Vanderbilt can’t expect to land a top-20 or top-30 class, but the Commodores needed to be in the top 50 at least. Instead, they fell outside the top 60. That’s not good.
California Golden Bears
This is a product of the fact that the Golden Bears fired Sonny Dykes in early January and gave new head coach Justin Wilcox virtually no time in which to form a recruiting class. California really needed to terminate its head coach in early December and give its new hire a fighting shot to work on assembling the best incoming players. California finished outside the top 65 in a year when six Pac-12 teams finished in the top 30. The Golden Bears lost a lot of ground National Signing Day. This is a program that is trending in the wrong direction. There was so much optimism early on last season with Jared Goff and the 5-0 start, but everything has gone downhill from that point. NSD was not a good day for the Bears.
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