Notre Dame finally beats USC in football

Well, in football recruiting, anyway. Today was National Signing Day, and the Irish recruiting class is ranked #2 by both Rivals and Scout. USC is #10 and #13, respectively, their lowest rankings since 2002 (and behind UCLA, according to Scout... ugh!).

Comments

[Sandy Underpants]

Charlie Shyste must be the greatest BSer on the planet to get so many young superstars to come to a 3-9 team that was already comprised of consecutive top 10 recruiting classes. Let's see if he has better luck with this group... after Bill Bellichick gives him the secrets of HIS success now that the Patriots have finished another dissapointing season themselves.

[JohnMac]

Nationally ranked Notre Dame also beat a red hot Seton Hall team on the road in basketball. They will try to extend the 33 (i think) game home winning streak on Saturday against Marquette. A win on Saturday will likely move ND up into the teens and hopefully into top 5 seed discussion.

[Andrew]

The way they calculate the recruiting rankings is bunk. What you should look at is the average rating of the recruit, because the recruiting services give far too much weight to class size (e.g., Alabama has over 30 recruits, but many of those will have to "grayshirt" or will become academic casualties and thus not enroll this fall). On that measure, Notre Dame still has the best class in America, but USC is right behind at #2.

What hurts USC is the logjam at the glamour positions of WR (1), RB (0*), and QB (0), which they recruited lightly this year and which have the highest distribution of stars, focusing instead on shoring up depth in the OL and DL. Take a look at 2009's early commits and you can see we are raking in the top players of next year's class very early. Bottom line: USC fans have absolutely nothing to worry about, our recruiting efforts have continued their stellar run.

*Technically the Trojans took two RBs, but both were recruited as athletes -- Baucham as a likely DB and McNeal as a kick returner.

[fezafou]

Sandy, actually 18 of those 23 were on board before the season started, and to Andrew he is correct about USC for the 2009 class they have a great start on it.

[fezafou]

Sandy, actually 18 of those 23 were on board before the season started, and to Andrew he is correct about USC for the 2009 class they have a great start on it.

[Doc]

Go take a look at the class. There's nothing here to complain about, at all. That's a scary-good recruiting class on both sides of the line.

http://www.petecarroll.com/index.cfm/pk/view/cd/NAA/cdid/402397/pid/400025

[Joe Loy]

Let us note that the Notre Dame Recruits include the SouthBend-bound Mike Golic Jr. :) of Northwest Catholic High in Newington's bucolic suburb :> of West Hartford, CT ~ making Irish football alum Mike Golic Sr. a very proud papa :).

[teresa]

ESPN ranked USC's class at #6 and ND at #9.

[Scientizzle]

I clicked on the Rivals and Scout links in the post, and 'SC is at #7 & #9, respectively, right now. Perhaps Uona Kavienga's late-night commit bumped them up?

[denverdem]

ESPN's rankings are a joke b/c even if you tally the numbers by the metrics they provide, ND comes out top 3 in every one. CFB personalities at ESPN loathe ND and this is a pretty good example.

[Trisha]

These rankings are interesting. If you look, there are several (I didn't comapare all of the them) schools with different "commit" numbers. For instance, Alabama has 33 total on one and 32 total on the other. I wonder why this is? Which one is correct?

[Trisha]

Oh, and that includes the number of starred recruits. Look at TOSU. Scout shows TOSU with 8 5-star recruits. Rivals shows them with only 3 5-star recruits. That's a significant discrepency.