Notre Dame Football: 2020 recruiting class ranking was about quantity, not quality

Notre Dame’s football program received a ranking of 11 for their 2020 recruiting class, but that had more to do with quantity of prospects than quality.

Following Wednesday’s National Letter of Intent day in college football, the vast majority of football recruits are now officially committed to a program. The result of the recruiting class that Notre Dame was able to secure for 2020 was a ranking of  No.11 from 247Sports, which is widely held as one of the best college football recruiting analysis sites.

At first glance, Irish fans may be disappointed with where their team finished in the overall rankings. This is especially true, since other college football powerhouse programs such as Clemson (ranked 1st), Alabama (ranked 2nd), Ohio State (ranked 3rd), Georgia (ranked 4th), LSU (ranked 5th), Auburn (ranked 7th), Florida (ranked 8th) and Oklahoma (ranked 10th) all finished ahead of Notre Dame in recruitment rankings for this class.

While it should be somewhat concerning that these teams that ranked ahead of Notre Dame in the polls this college football season and also finished higher than the Irish in recruitment rankings for the upcoming 2020 class, there is a silver lining for fans of the Irish.

The ranking that Notre Dame received had more to do with the number of scholarships offered than it did the quality of players that committed to South Bend. Notre Dame only offered 18 scholarships this season, much less than were offered in recent recruiting classes.

The 247 rankings are based upon the total number of points given to each recruit that has committed to the program. As a group, the Irish 2020 recruiting class scored a total of 257.19. Notre Dame’s top recruit, five-star running back Chris Tyree, accounts for 12.35 of those 257.19 points. Meanwhile 5-star wide receiving commit Jordan Johnson, the second highest rated Irish commit, accounts for 12.26 points.

Conversely, the second lowest rated commit in Notre Dame’s 2020 recruiting class is 3-star defensive end Alexander Ehrensberger, who accounts for 2.53 points towards the 257.19 score for the Irish. Adding one more player of Ehrensberger’s caliber would have bumped the Irish up two more spots to the 9th overall team. If the Irish had been able to land 4-star recruit Peter Skoronski, who opted to instead go to Northwestern and 4-star offensive lineman Walter Parks, who committed to Clemson, their score would have jumped to 273.87 — good for seventh overall.

Of the teams who ranked ahead of Notre Dame, only Texas (ranked 9th) had less commitments, with 17. Outside of Texas and Georgia (19 commits), the rest of the top ten ranked recruiting classes had at least 21 commitments, with Alabama and Ohio leading the way with 26 commitments.

Michigan (26 commits), Penn State (27 commits), Washington (22 commits) and Tennessee (23 commits) came in as the four teams ranked just behind Notre Dame.

When taking into consideration the impact that the number of commits has on the ranking system for college recruiting classes, it becomes apparent that Notre Dame secured high quality recruits, rather than a high quantity of recruits. In total, the Irish would secure two 5-star recruits, seven 4-star recruits and nine 3-star recruits.

The deep dive into the ranking system for this 2020 recruiting class shows that Brian Kelly and his staff did an excellent job of recruiting high level talent to fill the 18 scholarships that were offered this year. The talent coming to South Bend with the 2020 recruiting class, coupled with the fact that Notre Dame currently possesses the No. 1 ranked recruiting class for 2021, there should be a great deal of optimism around what the future holds for the Notre Dame Irish football program moving forward.