Jimbo Fisher and Florida State Continue to Win Big on the Recruiting Trail
As we pointed out back in October, we’ve revamped recruiting coverage a bit. While in-season recruiting has slowed up some, we still saw movement over the past month, with the ACC taking its fair share of lumps and losing a handful of solid recruits. You’ll notice this dip in the overall numbers across the board.
Below you’ll find a breakdown of ACC recruiting rankings from Rivals, 247Sports and Scout, as well as a breakdown of ACC players currently ranked in the ESPN 300.
ACC Football 2013 Recruiting Rankings (December 20)
Each service compiles rankings with a different scoring system, using the total number of points accumulated per school to decide their rank compared to all other classes. However, this also provides an unfair advantage to larger classes, emphasizing quantity over quality. With that in mind, we also included averages, to account for high-quality, smaller classes. For schools like Louisville and Syracuse, looking at smaller overall classes, the total score hurt quite a bit. For schools with larger recruiting classes, like Pittsburgh and Wake Forest, saw their rankings get a boost. Also note that while Scout and Rivals use the standard “stars” system (1-5), 247Sports has an algorithm out of 100 that they explain on their site. Under “composite” below, you’ll find the average ranking score for each school (using both total score and average score), so we can get a much fuller picture on the quality of respective classes using a variety of methods.
| TEAM | Total Players | Scout (pts) | Scout (avg) | Rivals (pts) | Rivals (avg) | 247 (pts) | 247 (avg) | Composite |
| Florida State | 16 | 16 | 15 (3.35) | 13 | 16 (3.38) | 17 | 15 (88.38) | 15.33 |
| Clemson | 16 | 21 | 11 (3.50) | 19 | 17 (3.38) | 19 | 13 (88.81) | 16.67 |
| Virginia Tech | 17 | 27 | 24 (3.21) | 17 | 19 (3.33) | 10 | 12 (89.11) | 18.17 |
| North Carolina | 19 | 18 | 21 (3.16) | 18 | 25 (3.16) | 16 | 17 (88.21) | 19.17 |
| Virginia | 17 | 38 | 35 (2.94) | 25 | 22 (3.24) | 22 | 24 (87.16) | 27.67 |
| Miami | 11 | 43 | 18 (3.27) | 65 | 14 (3.4) | 63 | 21 (87.55) | 37.33 |
| Pittsburgh | 20 | 34 | 44 (2.85) | 38 | 57 (2.8) | 30 | 47 (83.45) | 41.67 |
| Maryland | 18 | 51 | 48 (2.72) | 44 | 50 (2.89) | 26 | 49 (83.63) | 44.67 |
| Georgia Tech | 15 | 51 | 41 (2.87) | 54 | 40 (2.93) | 54 | 44 (83.77) | 47.33 |
| NC State | 17 | 64 | 70 (2.38) | 51 | 56 (2.88) | 54 | 57 (82.17) | 58.67 |
| Wake Forest | 19 | 56 | 58 (2.56) | 50 | 65 (2.68) | 74 | 77 (80.37) | 63.33 |
| Louisville | 10 | 69 | 38 (2.9) | 84 | 54 (2.89) | 98 | 42 (84.3) | 64.17 |
| Boston College | 15 | 67 | 69 (2.4) | 63 | 71 (2.6) | 67 | 61 (81.73) | 66.33 |
| Duke | 16 | 66 | 67 (2.44) | 63 | 75 (2.56) | 69 | 68 (81.13) | 68.00 |
| Syracuse | 14 | 71 | 73 (2.36) | 72 | 70 (2.62) | 82 | 72 (80.62) | 73.33 |
When checking out the ESPN 300 rankings, you can also see that the majority of the ACC’s top recruits went to the top-ranked schools. A look at the top 10 ACC recruits:
| Player | School | Position | Rating (ESPN) |
| Kendall Fuller | Virginia Tech | CB | 88 |
| Dorian Johnson | Pittsburgh | RB | 88 |
| Ryan Green | Florida State | RB | 85 |
| Austin Golson | Florida State | OT | 85 |
| Kevin Olsen | Miami | QB | 85 |
| Artie Burns | Miami | CB | 85 |
| Dorian O’Daniel | Clemson | OLB | 84 |
| Travis Johnson | Miami | TE | 84 |
| Taquan Mizzell | Virginia | RB | 84 |
| Levonte Whitfield | Florida State | ATH | 84 |
Obviously Clemson‘s taken the biggest hit right off the bat, losing two of its biggest recruits in the Robert Nkemdiche fiasco.
| TEAM | Total |
| Florida State | 10 |
| Clemson | 7 |
| Miami | 6 |
| Virginia Tech | 5 |
| North Carolina | 5 |
| Virginia | 1 |
| NC State | 1 |
| Louisville | 1 |
Some additional thoughts:
- As mentioned throughout this piece, the ACC really took some hits these past couple months. Clemson lost two top recruits. Florida State lost two, while picking up another two much further down the top 300 list or so.
- Syracuse has done a great job of reclaiming the New York state area. So while the numbers may not look great, they have improved under coach Doug Marrone. Additionally, it doesn’t take into account his JUCO circuit success (numbers count, but not “stars”).
- Louisville’s another school that, like SU, has plenty of big targets and time to lure them. A bowl game win will do them wonders in many cases.
- The ACC’s overall performance has also fallen off a bit, as the Big Ten and Big 12, along with USC and Notre Dame, have certainly put themselves in a much more impressive place as recruiting heats up. From the ACC’s standpoint, it’s not great to be losing so much ground.
Check back next month, since we’re compiling recruiting rankings on a monthly basis. We’ll have additional notes on individual commitments as deemed necessary/important.
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