On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine: West Virginia leads for Rodney Gallagher

Uniontown (Pa.) Laurel Highlands four-star wide receiver Rodney Gallagher announced his top eight schools last month, but one program is running ahead of the pack, according to the On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine (RPM).

The 5-foot-10, 165-pounder was originally set to commit on July 4. But he announced Sunday that his announcement was moved up to Wednesday, May 25.

With a little less than 48 hours until he makes it public, the On3 RPM heavily favors West Virginia to land the nation’s No. 106 overall prospect in the On3 Consensus. It gives the Mountaineers a 91.9 percent chance of securing his commitment. Penn State (3.3%) and Pittsburgh (1.4%) trail far behind.

RPM was released to the public in December. The On3 engineering group teamed up with Spiny.ai to create the industry’s first algorithm and machine learning-based product to predict where athletes will attend college. 

It factors in machine learning, expert predictions, social sentiment, visits, and historical trends. However, expert predictions are still a big piece of the RPM equation.

Rodney Gallagher has four official visits set

Earlier this month, Gallagher locked in four official visits in the month of June. At the time, Penn State was considered a significant favorite to land him by the RPM. But in recent weeks, West Virginia has been the trending school, and he is expected to visit Morgantown officially June 3-5.

Notre Dame (June 10-12), Oklahoma State (June 13-15) and Penn State (June 17-19) are his other scheduled visits. But it’s unclear if he will still make those trips after announcing his commitment on Wednesday.

Gallagher currently has an On3 NIL Valuation of $227k. The On3 NIL Valuation is an index that looks to set the standard market value for both high school and college-level athletes. The NIL valuation does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals an athlete has completed to date. It rather signifies an athlete’s value at a certain moment in time.