re: The final SEC class rankings:

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Oh? It doesn't have anything to do with the ranking they have given the Hogs?

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The espn head of recruiting is tom luginbill for gods sake. She may have been removed, but it included heather dinnich for the longest time. These are their star talent analysts for high school recruits.

247 (in addition to having quality evaluators) also merges the top3 sites for an average so one site only has so much sway in the composite.

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247 has Arkansas ranked lower so your boom isn’t a gotcha moment.

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What a swing and miss by him

247 rankings

247 shows
1. Texas 8&4
2. Bama
3. GA Bulldogs
12. Kelly's Heroes-LSU
13. Kentucky
14. Missouri
16. Tennessee
18. The Barn
19. UF Shoe Tossers
23. Ole Miss
26. USCe
27. Cowbell U
28. Hogs
31. Vandy

10 in Top 25 and all 14 in Top 31. That's a nice class for Vandy.

What's surprising is Vanderbilt's class, especially after the year they had.

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What's surprising is Vanderbilt's class, especially after the year they had.

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Every year that goes by makes me less convinced that the current product on the field impacts the next recruiting class as much as we assume it does. Seems like some programs win 3 games and have a solid recruiting class while others win 9-10 and have an underwhelming one.

The top three classes are so far removed from the rest of the conference it is crazy though. I mean, A&M/Bama/UGA combined may have more T100 players combined than the rest of CFB.

If not, it is really close

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Every year that goes by makes me less convinced that the current product on the field impacts the next recruiting class as much as we assume it does. Seems like some programs win 3 games and have a solid recruiting class while others win 9-10 and have an underwhelming one.

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Well, recruiting is about relationships more than anything else. I think that's why performance on the field doesn't matter as much as folks think. As long as a coach can show a recruit that there's a role for them and can sell his vision there's often a chance.

Still Vanderbilt isn't the easiest place to sell when it comes to football. That's a class that would make them a contender or at least upper middle of the pack in a lot of conferences but in the SEC it isn't much to brag about. It's kinda insane the talent the conference has across the board.

And hat's off to Vanderbilt's coach for not just phoning it in on the recruiting trail.

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The top three classes are so far removed from the rest of the conference it is crazy though. I mean, A&M/Bama/UGA combined may have more T100 players combined than the rest of CFB.

If not, it is really close

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This isn't a good thing but it's going to be the case until the NCAA or some other governing body figures out a way to level the playing field in recruiting. No one is going to want a radical change but a few more of those recruits going to other schools needs to happen for the sake of fair competition. Right now, we're watching a game that is inherently unfair when it comes to the top 3 or 4 schools in recruiting. The real competition is between schools in the lower tiers and that's not a healthy setup.

There is a chance most of us become farm clubs for the top 5 schools, but I'd still rather see how a free market plays this out.
Vandy's class seems a testament to that--they ran out of places to stuff all the money they have, with their endowment and the sports revenues they get every year. So apparently they decided, "Well, maybe we should spend a little of this on actual sports."

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Why is one better than the other?

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ESPN is by far the worst recruiting site. On3 and 247 are far superior.