FanPost

Recruiting: Big East vs. ACC


I broke down some recruiting rankings looking at Syracuse, the rest of the Big East and the ACC. 

Going, solely by ESPN's rankings ( not saying they are the best, but lets be real, they are as good as any), only 1 BE team currently has a ESPN Top 150 recruit verbally committed. That would be West Virginia with exactly 1.

Not one BE team has a 5 star recruit committed. ZERO.

Moving to the ACC.

Only 4 ... 33% of the teams ... have ESPN Top 150 recruits committed to day. FSU leads the way with 10. Clemson and Miami both have 5. Virginia has 1. Virginia Tech, for instance, ..... ZERO.

How many teams have a committed 5 star recruit? Exactly 1. FSU with a grand total of 1 ( some perspective here, Alabama currently has 1, and LSU currently has 0).

I admit I do see more 4 star recruits among the ACC teams. Rutgers and Pitt who are widely held to currently hold the best BE recruiting classes each have (3) 4 star recruits committed. Just has one examples V-T has 4, Clemson has 8, Miami has 9, and FSU has 13.

So a few observations:

1) Syracuse is not really lagging too far behind the rest of the BE. Even with zero 4 star recruits. The fact is the BE doesn't recruit all that well as a whole.

2) If Syracuse is letting the "big ones" get away, it appears a whole lot of other teams incl. come very solid teams year to year like Virginia Tech are as well.

3) It appears that the ACC simply recruits better than the BE. Even a middling ACC team like UNC has as many 4 star recruits as Rutgers and West Virginia (again said to currently have the two best classes in the BE).

In my opinion, looking at this, I think our recruiting can only improve as we move to the ACC. I look at teams like BC and Virginia, hardly ACC football powers, but both only have 2 unranked commits, each have some 4 star ( BC 1, Virginia 3) players. We overlap both these teams a great deal in recruiting grounds, as we do many other ACC teams.

For instance, BC's three best recruits come from PA, OH, and VA. They have many from NJ.

The improved quality of the league will simply draw a higher quality of recruit.