Where Notre Dame’s 2025 class ranks early on in the cycle

When Chicago Simeon EDGE Christopher Burgess announced his commitment to Notre Dame on Saturday afternoon, it gave the Irish 12 verbal pledges in the 2025 cycle.

While it is very early on in the class, Rivals’ and 247 Sports’ team rankings list the Fighting Irish as the No. 1 team in the country. But according to the 2025 On3 Industry Ranking Football Team Recruiting Rankings, Notre Dame’s class currently ranks No. 6.

What gives?

The bottom of this article will explain in more detail, but in short, the other team rankings are more of a popularity contest this early in the cycle — the more commits the school has, the higher their ranking will be. However, On3’s team rankings formula is a more accurate representation of an entire class and do a better job of mirroring what the rankings may look like at the end of the year.

Notre Dame is off to a strong start to the class, but their team ranking elsewhere is more due to having the most commits in the country.

The 2024 class rankings are not finished yet with adjustments to player ratings to be done now that the all-star games have concluded, and there are still prospects who will commit to schools during the traditional February signing period.

But if Notre Dame’s current No. 10 ranking holds, it will mark the first time since 2006-08 that the Irish have signed back-to-back-to-back top-10 classes. And Marcus Freeman will have done so in his first three cycles as Notre Dame’s head coach.

And if the Irish are able to land in the top 10 for the 2025 cycle, it will mark the first time Notre Dame has ever signed four-straight top-10 classes. This is all according to the On3 Industry Ranking Football Team Recruiting Rankings.

Notre Dame has eight four-star commits and four three-star commits thus far. We’re 11 months until signing day for the 2025 class, and the Irish’s class is about half-full already.

The group is headlined by Lucedale (Miss.) George County’s Deuce Knight, who ranks as the nation’s No. 37 overall player and No. 4 quarterback per the 2025 On3 Industry Ranking.

Below is a look at the top 10 schools according to the 2025 Industry Team Recruiting Rankings, as of Sunday 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 3. This means that of Notre Dame’s 12 commitments, only the three highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.

To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 12 commits have an average recruit rating of 90.25, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Notre Dame’s top three commits are only being used in the Industry Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 93.218 — 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.