Miami had a full class worth of decommitments in 2016. Don’t worry too much about early recruiting rankings

It’s been less than two weeks since 2016 recruits signed with their new schools, but 2017 recruiting has been happening for months — even years — now. Ohio State and Miami have 11 and 10 commits, respectively, and are two of the teams off to the fastest starts. Thirteen schools have at least five commits.

Early commitments have become more common as offers have come earlier in the cycle, but they also mean recruits are making decisions before having all of their potential offers in.

Last year’s Miami class is a clear example of how early class results can be misleading. The Hurricanes had 20 players committed on April 14, 2015, and only 11 of them actually ended up signing with the program.

Miami had a unique situation last year, with Al Golden’s hot seat, Golden’s firing, a long interim coaching tenure and Mark Richt’s eventual hiring, but throughout the process, the Hurricanes best exemplified a system in which early commits don’t actually mean all that much.

Overall, Miami had 25 decommits in 2016. Of those, 22 came before those recruits’ senior seasons even started. Some decommitted, while others lost their offers. Here’s the list, from State of the U’s Cameron Underwood.

Incredibly, that class of decommitted players would rank 22nd in the nation, according to the 247Sports class calculator — right behind Miami’s current class at No. 21.

While Miami’s case might have been extreme — though it’s a good warning sign that shows how unpredictable college football’s coaching carousel is — it’s not unique to have players leave after committing early, either after they’ve been reevaluated by the staff, or after they leave. Michigan, for instance, pulled the offer of its longest-committed player, plus others who had been committed for a long time.

Early commits don’t even last at quarterback, the position many classes are built around. Take last year’s quarterbacks class: 17 of the top 18 2016 quarterback recruits were committed by July of 2015, but four of them are now at different schools, and four dropped out of the top 18 in the rankings.

Whether it’s due to commits finding greener pastures later, or coaches reevaluating recruits they’ve offered, the current recruiting rankings are unlikely to look like way next February.