2011 National Signing Day: Ranking College Football’s Top Recruiting Classes

Debate the validity of ranking college football recruiting classes all you want, but real games don’t start up again until September, and assigning winners and losers for 2011 National Signing Day is the only way we, as a nation, will be able to assert tribal superiority over our most hated gridiron foes between now and spring camp injury pools. (Everybody does those, right?) With less than 24 hours to go before creaky fax machines wheeze to life in football offices from coast to coast, here are the current clubhouse leaders in college football recruiting, as ranked by our friends at Rivals:
1. Alabama
2. Texas
3. Florida State
4. LSU
5. USC
6. Auburn
7. Georgia
8. Oregon
9. Notre Dame
10. Clemson
And the takeaways:
• We’re still ______. Alabama suffered multiple embarrassing losses in 2010, and Texas was shut out of postseason play entirely, but those are program pedigrees that speak for themselves. The recruiting triumvirate powerhouse you do want to worry about is Florida, languishing down at No. 17 even after the installation of legendary recruiter Will Muschamp as head coach.
• Now is the season of ... Jimbo! It wasn’t hard to see this one coming, but with coaching swaps at Miami and UF, FSU has the state on apparent lockdown.
• Returning to glory, any day now. After everything USC and Notre Dame have been through as programs in the past couple years, safe to say they could disband scholarship football entirely, field only club teams, and still land top high school football recruits, year after year after year.
• Save our skipper! Will a stellar 2011 recruiting class cool the toasty seat of Mark Richt? That’s the buzz around the lately-troubled program that’s been raking in blue chips by the handful.
• Clemson? Yeah, I think that one threw us all for a loop.
Stay tuned to this StoryStream for more college football recruiting news as we count down the hours to 2011 National Signing Day.