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Why FBS college football teams signed 400 fewer recruits than normal in 2021
FBS college football teams signed more than 400 fewer recruits to scholarships in the class of 2021 than they did in the classes of 2020 and 2019. In 2021, FBS teams signed
247sports.com
FBS college football teams signed more than 400 fewer recruits to scholarships in the class of 2021 than they did in the classes of 2020 and 2019. In 2021, FBS teams signed 2215. In 2020 they signed 2622, and in 2019 they signed 2671. That’s a significant drop-off and one which will impact the sport in the coming years.
So why did it happen? Where did all of the players go? And will the trend continue?
The dramatic decrease is a result of several happenings across college football.
High school uncertainty and the alternative of the portal.
A lot of teams elected to sacrifice the potential upside of recruits for the relative certainty of existing college players via the transfer portal. Some Power 5 programs used a third of their scholarships in the transfer portal, and some Group of 5 programs will end up using most or all of theirs via the portal.
"If it is a borderline recruit for us, we'd rather take a transfer who we know can cut it physically at the college level," said one staffer.
Ultimately, there were a lot of recruits who fell into that borderline category. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, college football teams and recruits scrambled to find out information about one another. There were no on-campus camps, official visits, in-home visits or opportunities to see prospects work out in person. How big is a player, really? What are he and his family truly like? Is one school's campus and culture actually a better fit than another?
Why not take a transfer player who can be OK for two years and get that scholarship back quickly to use on a future recruit as opposed to risking a “four-year mistake” on a borderline high school prospect you've never worked out or seen in person?
Adding to the uncertainty of evaluating high school prospects this season is that several major and quite a few minor talent producing states did not play high school football in the fall. Those include California, Washington, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and parts of Pennsylvania and New York, just to name a few.
Normally, schools have a decent idea of the quality of a prospect based on his first three years of high school. But senior seasons can help bring things into focus, and plenty of recruits do emerge seemingly from out of nowhere based on their senior seasons. Without those seasons being played in those states, the picture is even more blurry.
All of this comes at a time when more players have entered the transfer portal than ever before, with the expectation that they will be immediately eligible in the fall.
For many schools, the decision was made to take fewer risks on high schoolers and instead acquire some certainty in the form of transfers, even if data shows transfers have little upside, on average.
Money also played a big part in this.
As a way to entice existing college players to play in what was one of the strangest, most disjointed college football seasons ever amid a global pandemic, the NCAA ruled that the 2020 season does not count against a player’s eligibility clock, meaning that if a senior played in 2020, he could return in 2021 and still be a senior.
Further, those bonus-year seniors do not count against the NCAA maximum of 85 scholarship players on the roster.
This means that a team with 10 returning seniors who were already seniors in 2020 could actually carry 95 scholarship players for the 2021 season (the normal 85 max plus the 10 who don’t count against the cap).
But just because the NCAA is allowing it does not mean that individual schools are. Budget crunches are a real thing, particularly in the smaller FBS conferences which make up the Group of 5. I know of multiple schools whose administrations have told their staffs that even though the NCAA will allow teams to temporarily exceed the 85 total scholarship cap via use of the extra years, that they will not be allowed to do so due to budget constraints.
If you are coaching at a school which is light on cash or tight with the purse strings, the reality is that you are faced with a choice of allowing a bonus-year senior to return or taking a high school player. The same logic applies here as it does above: to take a high school player who you might have never seen, or take another year of a bonus senior with whom you’re intimately familiar due to him being on your roster for several years already.
Not all schools held back on signing high schoolers. At the very top of the recruiting rankings, most teams left only one or two spots open for transfers. Alabama, in its No. 1 class of all-time, signed 26. It seems that the schools signing the very best of the prospects had the confidence to go ahead and do so. Some schools at the bottom of the Power 5 or in the Group of 5 in defined rebuilding mode played the long game and did the same.
What does the future hold?
In the short term, these numbers might even out a bit if the aforementioned states do end up playing football in the spring. Surely, more prospects will emerge from those states. But it won’t be enough to close the gap by half, more likely, since a lot of prospects from those states have already signed.
In the longer term, there is a coming scholarship crunch for the classes of 2022 and 2023. In the 2021 cycle, schools did not have to count COVID bonus seniors against the 85 scholarship cap. But for the 2022 and 2023 seasons, there is little confidence that the schools which make up the NCAA will vote for an extended suspension of the 85, meaning that schools, if they want to have those bonus seniors back, will have to count them against the 85. More on this soon at 247Sports as we talk to more schools and sort out the ramifications.
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