Notre Dame falls out of top 10 of 2025 Industry Football Team Recruiting Rankings
Let’s call a spade a spade — it’s going to be difficult for Notre Dame to sign a top-10 class in the 2025 cycle.
It’s a tale we’ve become accustomed to — the Irish typically start a recruiting cycle hot and lead the nation in commitments for a while. And with that, it helps them grab a high ranking early in the cycle in the team recruiting rankings (usually the highest at Rivals due to their set up, more on that later). But as other schools catch up with commitments and the Irish slow down on new additions, the Irish drop several spots.
But Notre Dame has slid down to the No. 11 spot per the Industry Football Team Recruiting Rankings after being around the No. 5-6 position for a while. Other programs have caught up and passed ND in total number of commitments; the Irish’s last plecge came in early July from Winston-Salem (N.C.) Mount Tabor four-star safety JaDon Blair. ND also lost a commitment from Winter Garden (Fla.) West Orange safety Ivan Taylor shortly afterwards.
This is not unusual. In the 2024 cycle, Notre Dame had the No. 6 class in the country late June per the Industry Ranking and then dropped to No. 12 in the ensuing few weeks. But they moved up to the No. 10 spot after landing a pledge from Bellflower (Calif.) St. John Bosco linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa. ND finished the cycle No. 11.
The Irish could land another stud ‘backer from Southern California this month to make another move back into the top 10. San Juan Capistrano (Calif.) JSerra Catholic’s Madden Faraimo has Notre Dame near the top of his list along with USC and Texas.
The team recruiting rankings certainly aren’t the end-all, be-all, but it does give a data point to how Notre Dame’s class stacks up in one notable metric versus other powerhouse programs.
Notre Dame could suffer a loss to its 2025 class amid rumors that Lucedale (Miss.) George County quarterback Deuce Knight could flip to Auburn. This would be a major blow for multiple reasons, including a rankings standpoint, considering he’s the highest-ranked commit for ND’s class as the nation’s No. 38 overall player and No. 7 quarterback nationally.
While it’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to Notre Dame’s 2025 class, there’s no denying that the Irish have hit a rough patch in recruiting.
Below is a look at the top 11 schools according to the 2025 Industry Team Recruiting Rankings, as of Friday afternoon.
Understanding On3’s team rankings system
The On3 Industry Team Recruiting Ranking utilizes all four major recruiting media companies: On3, 247Sports, Rivals and ESPN.
Instead of a total points system like at Rivals, the On3 Industry Team Ranking uses a score average of the player rankings, which solves the problem of varying class sizes during the recruiting cycle. It compiles the highest-rated commits for each team up to a total based on a rolling average of current total commitments among Power Five schools.
The current average number of commits in the 2025 class used in the rankings score is 16. This means that of Notre Dame’s 21 commitments, only the 16 highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.
To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 21 commits have an average recruit rating of 90.12, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Only Notre Dame’s top 16 commits are being used in the Industry Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 91.025 — this is the number used for the class ranking, as seen in the image above.
With this model, there are no bonus points for having more commitments than other teams, and only small deductions occur when a team has fewer commitments than the rolling average. Unlike distribution (bell) curves, this model doesn’t disproportionately weight a team’s top three or four highest-rated commits and is a more accurate representation of an entire class.
