Where Notre Dame stands in the 2024 Industry Team Rankings After National Signing Day
Notre Dame entered Wednesday, Dec. 21 with the nation’s No. 11 class according to the 2024 Industry Ranking Football Team Recruiting Rankings. Without any new additions to the class expected to occur on National Signing Day, the feeling was that Marcus Freeman and the Fighting Irish would see the end their streak of top-10 classes according to the metric.
That’s not what happened, though.
As the early signing period closes tonight (Dec. 22), Notre Dame actually moved up a couple spots in the rankings this week to No. 9. Florida and Florida State had top-10 classes prior to National Signing Day, but after suffering decommitments, they dropped down to No. 16 and No. 11, respectively. Notre Dame, meanwhile, didn’t have any players flip away.
While it was a “boring” signing day with no new additions for the Irish, the fact that they signed all 23 of their committed players was huge, especially when you think back to last year when Notre Dame lost commitments from four-star running back Jayden Limar and five-star safety Peyton Bowen that day.
It should be noted that the class rankings are not set in stone. There are still uncommitted players on the board who can sign with schools, and the postseason all-star games will cause for some rankings changes. But it’s a pretty safe bet that the Irish will keep their spot in the top 10 when the dust suttles.
The Irish signed the No. 6 class in the 2022 cycle and finished at No. 10 for the 2023 class. That marked the first time the Irish signed back-to-back top-10 classes in quite some time; this is never a feat that Brian Kelly had during his tenure in South Bend.
Freeman led Notre Dame’s defensive recruiting efforts as coordinator for the 2022 cycle and was pivotal in keeping the class together after Kelly left for LSU. This writer will give head coach credit to Freeman for the 2022 class. So, with that in mind, Freeman signed three top-10 classes in his first three cycles as Irish head coach.
Notre Dame has only signed back-to-back-to-back top-10 classes — again, per the Industry Ranking Football Team Recruiting Rankings — once before. And that was from 2006-08, when the Irish landed the No. 4, No. 5 and No. 4 classes, respectively.
Below is a look at the top 10 schools according to the 2024 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 used in the rankings score is 17. This means that of Notre Dame’s 23 commitments, only the 17 highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.
To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 23 commits have an average recruit rating of 90.77, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Notre Dame’s top 17 commits are only being used in the Industry Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 91.764 — 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.
