2014 all-conference recruit teams: Stacking up the best incoming freshmen

Why group all the midmajors (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt) into one big clump, when we broke out individual recruit teams for the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC? Simple. In the Playoff era, all non-AQ teams are competing with each other for one designated New Year’s bowl slot. So while they’re not in the same conference together, they’re all chasing the same prize.

And based on the consensus recruiting ratings compiled by the 247 Sports Composite, one team dominated its new peers as much as any other team in the country did. The rosters are below, but first, a few notes.

For the majority of Big 12 teams, recruiting is always going to be a difficult endeavor -- most of the geographic footprint of the conference sits over states that don’t produce a great deal of talent every year, a list that includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, West Virginia and, to a lesser extent, Oklahoma. None of those states come close to producing enough high-level prospects to field a competitive team in a conference like the Big 12.

Only Texas produces a deep well of prospects each and every year, but there’s something happening in Texas and it spells trouble for all the schools that recruit there in the Big 12, which is to say all of them, with the exception of the Mountaineers -- Dana Holgorsen’s program hasn’t cracked into the state yet.