Not bad
The 2025 College Football Recruiting cycle officially wrapped up one week ago, but for Notre Dame (and a vast majority of the country) it was a done deal back on the early signing day in December.
Still… the recruiting services finally published their final sets of player rankings, and now we have the full scope of how the 2025 Notre Dame Football class actually looks like.
- 247 — 12th
- 247 Composite — 12th
- ESPN — 15th
- Rivals — 11th
- On3 — 12th
- On3 Industry — 12th
Long live Rivals I guess.
Notre Dame signed 25 players and ranked somewhere between 11th and 15th in the team rankings for the major services. It’s not great, but it IS still very good. For as much as I disagree with Deion Sanders on a number of things, his thoughts about recruiting classes are pretty solid.
In a transfer portal world, I think it’s okay to judge a recruiting class a little differently than the top to bottom ranking they get handed. Basically, put a much higher premium on the top 10 recruits in the class. With Notre Dame’s 2025 class, the top 10 all land inside the top 240 according to the 247 Composite rankings. You can consider that the base with roster development and portal additions coming in behind them.
Yes, it’s a little warped in the sense that there’s no real guideline — but it’s the reality of the times we are living in, and why the General Manager position is such a hot commodity. Notre Dame will always be more HS recruiting focused rather than portal focused (as opposed to Sanders at Colorado), but the two MUST go hand in hand to continue to compete in the playoff era.
Notre Dame has been doing a good job at combining the three (HS recruiting, portal additions, and development). If you’re disappointed in the actual class rankings, maybe think about the overall picture and maybe you’ll cheer up.