Just as a tie up for three programs I know of after signing day.
Alabama - 20 Commits (Jarez Parks grayshirt). They stand at 86 scholarships right now. Far and away the lightest the Bama roster has been in recent memory. Saban has carried sometimes up to 95 players in the off-season so look for some transfers in and them tapping into the grad transfer market. Also, virtually the entire staff changing over was a sign of the recruiting losses that were occurring. Brian Daboll was apparently an awful recruiter as OC and Saban brought in the polar opposite this year in Locksley.
Stanford - 14 Commits (Tanner McKee LDS mission). They stand at 79 Scholarships today. Stanford is different because they have extremely low attrition and very high use of the Redshirt Seniors staying on their roster. With that being said, they do lack depth at a few positions and are definitely lower than they'd like to be. A 20-22 person class was the goal and it simply failed this year. They also don't take transfers into their program with any type of frequency because of their academic restrictions.
Ohio State - 26 Commits. They stand at 89 Scholarships which is the same number as Notre Dame (without Jimmy Byrne, Dan Cage, CJ Holmes). Tremendous depth at almost every position in terms of sheer numbers. They are a little light at the DE position but they have NFL starters so its okay. Probably going to move up in the team talent 247 rank to #1 for next season. It'll be interesting to see if they can back up the talent.
Reps. I'll add three more programs.
Clemson -17 Commits with five five stars and seven four stars. That star power ranked Clemson's '18 class first in the ACC and sixth nationally. Nine recruits are early enrollees, all counting towards '17 since the '17 class was 14. Their scholarship count is at
82. More remarkable is that nine of those eighty-two are walkons awarded scholarships last year and carried over this year (3 are STers). Clemson signed the #2 OT, but only three of their fourteen OLmen ranked better than twenty-fourth over the last four classes. Seven have ranked 55th or higher. Dabo has in the past sent out late offers, and may well, of course, complete his roster by giving out more scholarships to walkons.
Michigan - 19 Commits. This class was always going to be smaller than the two previous ones of 30 ('17) and 28 ('16). Their scholarship count is at
87. This class has bodies, but the blaze that marked the past two years at NSD was not even a sizzle this year. The ESP brought in sixteen of those nineteen. Michigan struck out on NSD. The last three were three stars. The class ranked twenty-first nationally and had one LB, no DT/NTs, 1 WR (unranked at his position), and two OLmen. Of note, Michigan redshirt fifteen of last year's class of thirty. They could add a talented graduate transfer, Calvin Anderson, OT, from Rice, who is reportedly down to Michigan and Texas.
Florida State - 21 Commits. The last four FSU classes average 22 commits. With Taggert now in town, gone are the days when their scholarship count just before fall camp was in the upper 80s. FSU's scholarship count is now
82. FSU has the usual Early Entrants to the draft (5 this year). Two players left in December, transferring. Another three were not on the roster before NSD, of whom two had lingering medical issues. The strength of this class is at WR, DB, and DL. It had no QB and the RB is ranked 17th at his position. But after last year's with three RBs ranked in the top ten and two were redshirted expecting another top ten RB is ridiculous. Twelve players of '17's class of twenty-one were redshirted. Their class ranked eleventh nationally despite the coaching turnover, but was only third in the ACC behind Clemson (6th) and Miami (8th). The last time FSU did not have the top ranked class in the ACC was 2008.
