The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Signing Day Reaction: Are NIL & the transfer portal leading to top-end talent spreading out in CFB?

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt reacts to a wild Signing Day. He touches on Georgia's impressive No. 1 class ranking, Jeremiah Smith signing with Ohio State and how Dylan Raiola could immediately improve Nebraska's offense. Then, he dives into Jordan Seaton's potential flip from Colorado and proposed ways to stop players from signing prematurely and flipping commitments. Lastly, he dives into how NIL has changed the recruiting landscape and shows why top-end talent is getting more spread out in college football. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Joel Glaccio, we break down all things high school recruiting. That's right. It was signing day. Wild. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher. Believe that we are at the dawn of the golden age of college football. It was an epic day of college football. It was one of those days where you fall in love with the sport all over again. What's going on, everybody?

Welcome to the Joel Clad show. I am Joel Clatt. and this show is brought to you by Hampton by Hilton. Lots to get into today because we've got National Signing Day. The early signing day period is upon us. I've got lots of thoughts and there's lots of information to cover and some that is still outstanding. By the way, as we record this here on a Wednesday night. So first and foremost, wherever you're listening, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast.

Why not? Rate and review us. Do all of the fun things. That would be great. And by the way, share it with a friend. You could send this show to someone as a gift for Christmas. Merry Christmas, everybody. Here's the Joel Class show.

That would be a fun gift, wouldn't it? I think it would be. You can also subscribe on YouTube. So go ahead and subscribe on the YouTube channel because we've got lots of stuff. And you're going to want to be on the YouTube channel because as we move forward into the spring and towards draft season, we're going to have a lot of great content on YouTube. So you're going to want to subscribe to the YouTube channel.

over there as well. And you can comment, like it, do all the things. You can follow us on social media wherever you like to social media at Joel Clat Show. And you can catch up with everything that we've got going on right there. Okay. Let's get into high school recruiting. So signing day has come and passed in many ways. And here's what we have from a high school signing day perspective. The usual suspects recruited really well. Right. I know that that is a shocker to everybody, but guess what? Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, they all did a great job. They all did a fantastic job. And so in a lot of ways, nothing has changed. You take a look at whatever site that you're going to use, right? You can use on three, 24-7 and all the different

sites. And you look at these, and consensus is that Georgia signed the number one class in the country. And this is a juggernaut in a lot of ways. Kirby Smart has now signed the number one class in the country three times in his tenure at Alabama. And you've got, or excuse me, at Georgia. And then Alabama just continues to be a juggernaut in recruiting. And they always seem to make the late push, you know. And it was funny because Hugh Freeze made comments at their signing day press event at Auburn talking about teams in this conference that make a run late.

Well, I mean, Bama and Georgia typically make a bit of a run late. And Alabama certainly did this. year. So they're up there. And those two teams just continue to churn out top class after top class after top class. Now, on signing day, a hard press and a big move and a nice job from Mario Cristobal at Miami. And so they were able to move themselves up into that top five. Ohio State, they were really in a lot of ways, one of the best classes, if not the best class. I know that Georgia is going to have the numbers to rank them number one. But remember, a lot of that has to do with volume.

All of these rankings have to do with volume. So if you sign 26 players, that's going to be a better overall score for your class than if you sign 21 players. And a lot of that is just scholarship availability and what you've got in your program. Well, Georgia signed more players than Ohio State. Ohio State's average player ranking is right there with Georgia. And they signed more five-star players than anybody else in the country, although more on that in a little bit. So Ohio State continues to recruit well.

And this had to be a day that felt good. It'll feel better, obviously, if they can get this last one across the line. And again, I'll touch on that in a little bit. But it had to feel good for Ryan Day because in a lot of ways, everything that happens for the Buckeyes and in Columbus, it tends to conjure up this narrative or this feeling amongst the fan base or just college football public. It's like, the sky is falling. So it's like Kyle McCord transfers out.

Sky is falling. Julian Fleming transfers out. the sky is falling. And this is a program that consistently is one of the most talented teams in the country. They're not going anywhere, folks. Like everybody just needs to calm down with Ohio State. Now, Jeremiah Smith, who's the number one recruit in the country, Jeremiah Smith is officially a Buckeye. Hey, listen, in a lot of ways, this is a great time of year because this is the lifeblood of college football. Player acquisition is the lifeblood of any program. You cannot win at the highest level unless you have good players. It just doesn't happen. There has not been a team

full of three stars that go out there and beat some of these teams that are loaded with four and five stars. You can do it once, but you don't generally do it over the course of a season. You don't generally do it in order to win a playoff game or even a national championship. So this dictates, what we're going to see over the next three and four and five years. And because of that, it is one of my favorite times a year. It's signing daytime. So as you know, I take it seriously. And when I'm traveling on the road,

I love to stay at Hampton by Hilton's. And I can't risk calling the wrong play with where I stay. So I know that I can count on them, first of all, at Hampton by Hilton. I can depend on their comfortable rooms. I can very much depend on their warm and friendly service. and their free hot breakfast for me, total game changer. I depend on it, whether I'm traveling alone for work or I'm traveling with my family and I've got to feed my three boys. So that hot breakfast for me, boom, got to have it.

So whether you're cheering on your favorite team from the stands or never leaving the tailgate, hand to buy Hilton, will always give you that win. So let's talk about some of these individuals, right? So from a team perspective, you could talk about a lot of teams. Oregon did a nice job in their recruiting class. Missouri did a really nice job with their recruiting class. There was individual wins here and there, and there's a flip here and there. But overall, there's a couple of takeaways that I take away from this. And kind of the news of the day, if you will, I thought landed on some key player acquisitions.

And that's really what it is now. I think the first one was Dylan Raola, flipping and going. decommitting from Georgia and ending up at Nebraska and signing that letter of intent. So obviously this is a legacy. He's got, in a lot of ways, Nebraska in his blood. And I thought that this is a big get for Matt Rule because you need a place to start. You know, he's trying to build something there, clearly. They were a really good team outside of their quarterback play.

I mean, the quarterback play, guys, I don't know if we want. went over this. I don't think that we did, but, you know, I was taking some notes earlier in the week just, just on, on Nebraska's quarterback play and what it really was for them. And you look at the number of turnovers that they had. Here it is. I've got this. Remember, I got my trusty notebook here. So don't worry about this. So they get Bill and Raola at Nebraska. And you take a look at this team. They're a five and seven team. They lost four of those by three points or less. And in those three-point losses, they committed 15 turnovers. That's wild.

That's wild. I just think about it this way. There are 43 teams that had less than 15 total turnovers, and they turned it over 15 times in those contests. So you look at what this team could be, and I tell you, they could flip this pretty quick. and if you get better quarterback play, that's the first way to do it. So when I talk about Rayola being such a big commitment to Matt Rule, it's because to me it's tangible. It's tangible for Big Red.

If they get better play at that position and don't turn the ball over, then watch out. QBs accounted for 13 of those 15, 13 of the 15 turnovers in the three-point games. They lost the turnover margin in every game but two this year. And if this is a team that can cut that down, we saw great defense. We saw, I thought, some signs of what is to come from Matt Rule with some run game. And this is a team that could be pretty good.

Okay, so look at this. Michigan State, they lost 20 to 17, three turnovers. Maryland, they lost 13, 10, five turnovers. They lost Wisconsin by a score turnover in that game. Iowa, 13, 10, three turnovers, including that. horrendous late interception inside of a minute. Minnesota, they lost 13-10, four turnovers. It's unbelievable.

It's unbelievable. So, Dylan Rayola commits and signs with Nebraska. Huge. Huge. If he's as good as everyone thinks he is, and I think he's very good. I played one camp in Detroit. Dominic Rayola, his father was the center, got to know him well. I've seen him around on some of this circuit.

I saw him at a passing academy. last year. I think Dylan is a heck of a player. Now, at the time, he was committed to Ohio State, and then he decommitted and committed to Georgia. He's moved around high schools quite a bit. I hope that he stays at Nebraska. And it feels like as a legacy and as a guy that's trying to build something that he will,

and let's hope that he does. Let's hope that he does. All right. So that was a big one for me, was the Rayola one. DJ Lagway, he stuck with Florida. So this is a quarterback that there was some talk that there were, there was, I guess, late interest from around the country. I think USC was trying to get involved late on this one.

But Billy Napier holding on to DJ Lagway was huge. That's a monster commitment. And to get that across the finish line, that's a big one. So I thought that was big news on signing day. Edric Houston, the defensive lineman, there was some talk that there was, you know, people creeping around Edric Houston. and he sticks with Ohio State. And so Ohio State gets his guy, a really good player,

defensive linemen, and Edrick Houston has a chance to help them in a major way. Because we know that in order to win in that conference, in particular with what Oregon's going to bring to the table at the line of scrimmage and what Michigan already brings to the table at the line of scrimmage, they're going to have to be good at the line of scrimmage. Another big one. How about K.J. Bolden? I thought the Georgia getting KJ Bolden really propelled them to that number one class.

They flip him from Florida State. He goes to Georgia. That's a massive get. That's a massive get. By the way, both of those teams playing in the Orange Bowl. Our New Year 6 preview episode will be next week. So make sure you're coming back for that one. But KJ Bolden to Georgia, that was big.

All right. And then the other two, I would say, and listen, there are more. and I don't want to leave anybody out because if you're listening to this, you probably want me to tell you how great your school did. In a lot of ways, high school recruiting day is a little bit like fantasy football, right? You really care intimately about like just your team and you want me to tell you that the players that your team got and your team signed, they're going to make the difference and make a turn and they're going to win a national championship at your school.

And in a lot of ways, you know, we have no idea. think that that's pretty clear. But the other two big ones, I just think from a news perspective, Jeremiah Smith, the wide receiver for Ohio State, number one player in the country, and Jordan Seton, the number one offensive lineman, who was committed to Colorado. Remember, committed on undisputed with Skip and the guys and did the whole thing. And now has not signed and will not sign on Wednesday. And it looks like there are a couple of big players involved, Maryland being one of them, Oregon being another, that are making a big push late to get Jordan Seton. Let's call it what it is.

When a player flips or when there is a push from a team late, what does that mean? That obviously means NIL dollars. Okay. Like, that's pretty clear. Don't begrudge the players that one bit. And if they want to play in that world, then absolutely. go ahead and play in that world. I think that the hard part from a coaching perspective and from a program perspective

is that nobody can sign until that day. So the volume of players that you're trying to herd is at times like catching butterflies, herding cats. It's difficult because everybody's getting calls and there's a bag man ready to show up at everybody's doorstep. So these last few hours, like they take years off of these coaches. lives. And these coaches hate it. Hate it. And in a lot of ways, rightly so. Rightly so. But again, I'm not begrudging the players who want to play that game and who want to derive

leverage or use that leverage, then they should. And they should be able to because, again, their commodity is their talent. And the university, the program, those teams and those coaches, they need that talent in a lot of ways in order to be as successful as they want to be. well, if that's your leverage, then use it. Any one of us, any one of us listening right now, and I'm included in this, are looking for opportunities in our professional life to use leverage. Of course we are. So we should not begrudge these kids and players and young men.

I should call them young men. I shouldn't call them kids. These young men, the opportunity to do that. when you have leverage in your life, exercise it. Of course. You know, I hope I get a chance to do it someday. I hope you get a chance to do it someday. That's just kind of what it is.

So what should we do about it? Well, let's just say you don't want to play in that world. For whatever reason. You could be the number one player. You could be the 100th rank player. You can be the 300th ranked player. It doesn't matter. A 50th player.

It doesn't matter. If you're a player that doesn't want to play in the leverage game, and you don't want to be fielding calls, I think that we should allow players to sign at any moment during the course of their recruitment. For one, it would, in a lot of ways, it would reduce the ridiculous blanket offering of sophomores and freshmen throughout the country, high school sophomores and freshmen throughout the country.

You wouldn't be able to have 50 or 65 offers out there. And it's like, oh, we like that kid. Offer him so that we can put out a social media post or he can put out a social media post. Because there would be some consequences to that. As soon as there's an offer out in my system, that could sign it. Bam. And it's done. He can sign his National Letter of Intent right then, right there.

Then guess what? Tampering rules apply. So nobody else can call them. So in a lot of ways, like, the player could be done with it and not have to deal with the rat race that is recruiting if he doesn't want to. And then the player, or excuse me, the coach would have the peace of mind of knowing that that player could not break that letter of intent. And at least in his first year, is definitely going to be at that institution and with that program. Now, if the coach gets fired or if the coach leaves, obviously that then would be an ability or a way or an avenue to, unbind that national letter of intent, right? So clearly, and I know there are people out there

like, well, what if this, Joel? Well, yeah, obviously there are going to be examples where that's going to be a non-binding agreement. But if the coach stays and if the player wants to sign that agreement, it should be binding. And by the way, I don't really see why there shouldn't be able to be some sort of like NIL connection once the player is done with his last season and in those months leading up to his ability to go and enroll in the institution where that NIL can kind of start. The fact that we have this one day makes it in a lot of ways like a disaster. Now, it's fun for some, and maybe you had fun yesterday, you know, watching everything roll in and watching your team.

I think it would be better if you knew, like, right away. Now, would there be some parameters over this rule? Yeah, sure. There would be some parameters. I would set up parameters like you couldn't sign a letter of intent, and your entire season should be a dead period. So if you're playing high school football, that's a dead period. Coaches shouldn't be able to go and like see you and bother you.

You should be concentrating on playing for your team. That's what you should be able to do. And then if it's outside of that season, guess what? You should be able to be recruited and you should be able to go take visits. And if offered, and if you want to be there, and if you like that coach, you should be able to sign. Why wouldn't you? Why shouldn't you be able to sign right there?

So in a lot of ways, this, what we have right here, the big rat race could be reduced down to just those that want to play the game all the way through. And then the coaches would at least know. Okay, so that guy's verbal, but he doesn't want to sign until later. Okay, so like I know that that's going to be a battle. It's going to be a battle.

And now everybody else, it's like a bat signal from that player. They would know like that player is basically available. But if you want to sign, you should be able to sign. Jordan Seiden verbally committed to Colorado and has said, no, I'm not signing until after signing day. So they are potentially using some leverage there. And I don't begrudge them that opportunity. You only have a few opportunities in life where you have the leverage and then you can

exercise that leverage. Verbal commitments are just really not worth anything. So rather than us. worrying about every single verbal commitment, those that want to sign, just let them sign. Another thing that I noticed this year, and I think that this is a cool part, actually, of NIL. So does NIL make it a mess? Sure, obviously. Does NIL help?

Well, yeah, and it's not so obvious. And this is what I wanted to touch on. In a lot of ways, and this is why I opened the show, and there's that whole opening to this program about like, hey, I believe we're at the dawn of a golden age of college football. In a lot of ways, with the 12-team playoff kind of expanding who can define themselves as successful, with NIL, expanding where you can go for opportunity as a great player, in a lot of ways, what we're seeing is the talent dispersing from what we saw, let's say, five, six, seven years ago, three years ago. And I've tweeted about this and other people have touched on this.

But let me give you some examples and some conversations and some convales. concrete examples. Because it's not going to happen overnight. And it is going to take a little bit of time. But we're starting to see it. It's slow and it's moving. But we kind of started to see it this year. Right. What did I tell you all year long? There's not a great team, but there's a lot of good teams. And I think that trend is going to continue. Even with the usual suspects winning recruiting day, you know, high school signing day, George Alabama, Ohio State, Miami this year. They're not doing it by as much as they used to.

You see, five years ago, when we didn't have NIL and we only had a 14 playoff, those coaches could, and correctly so, say to players, why would you go anywhere else, you can't compete for a championship there. And that was totally fair. And if I was there, I would have used that as a recruiting pitch.

But then NIL comes in to play. And now we've got the looming expansion to 12 teams. Okay, so a couple of things happen with NIL. If you're one of the top, let's call it like 10 or 20 players in the country, then you could probably or probably should expect that school's best NIL deal that they can possibly provide. That's what you're looking for because you're essentially like a first round draft pick. And are you going to get what the star player or what the veteran gets? I don't know. I don't know.

But you would at least expect that team's best foot forward. If you want me as a top 20 player, then you need to show me that you're going to give me a deal that is your best deal. You can't take a four-star kid and offer him more money. You can't take a kid ranked behind me and give him more money. You can't do that. So guess what we see. We see top-end talent being dispersed around the country more so than what we saw three, four,

five, six and seven years ago. Let me give you an example of this. Okay. So Dylan Rayola, he was, you know, at least in the composite, the number two quarterback. Some services had him as the number one quarterback. He was the number one player at times during the course of this entire recruiting period. He signs it Nebraska. Okay.

Number one defensive player, consensus in the country. Where is he signed? Not Georgia. Missouri. Number two, wide receiver, Cam Coleman. Where's he go? Auburn. The number three wide receiver.

Micah Hudson, really good player. Where'd he go? Obviously, like, you know, he went to Texas or Ohio State, right? Nope. Texas Tech. At least in terms of a verbal commitment, the number one offensive linemen in the country, Jordan Seton. Where is he verbal to?

Colorado. Now, will he end up at Colorado? Don't know. But guess where he's at least rumored to be going? Maryland. Same boat. same boat. Number one offensive lineman, not going to the traditional power.

The number two edge player in the country. This was Dylan Stewart. Where's he going? South Carolina. So in every one of those cases in the composite ranking, we've got these top end players, you know, the number one, two, three players in their position and they're going to places that are not your normal usual suspects.

It's not what we saw in 2008. 18 and 19 in those recruiting classes were the margin between what Georgia and Alabama were doing at the top, and even Ohio State in some of those cases, what they were doing at the top was like vastly different than what even the number 20 team on the rankings was doing. So let me break it down this way. If you took the average player rating, okay? So if you follow recruiting, which if you're listening to this program, I think that you probably do, if you took the average player rating, you know, there were years.

I can remember Georgia, I believe, had or Ohio State one of the two in 2019, or maybe it was Bama. Anyways, it doesn't matter. Their average player rating for the top ranked class was over 95. I mean, an incredible class. Incredible. The average player rating for the, let's call it the like 20th ranked class in the country, which is still supposed to be pretty good, was like 88.9. almost 89.

There was like a five and a half, six point difference. All right. And then you took a look at this year. And this is the best way to explain it. Let me distill it down to you. The gap between the average player rating of the number one class in the country and the number 20 class in the country is shrinking. It's shrinking because the talent is being dispersed through the country.

Okay. So it's shrunken each of the last three years. And this year, 2000 and I guess this is the 2024 class, right? I don't know. Whatever. I always get confused. I believe it's the 24 class, even though we're still in 23. This average player rating, the difference between the number one class and the number 20 class is the smallest that it's ever been since we've tracked average player rating.

So these classes are much more similar than they are different. the margin used to be so big. And remember, there was six teams that you would just be like, well, those are the only six teams that can compete for playoff spots or even win a playoff game. And we all know who they were. And now I think it's a little different. I think it's a little different. That doesn't mean that those teams aren't still winning recruiting battles because they are. And look at them.

They're still up there with the number one class in the country. Georgia has the number one class in the country. Are they going to have a better chance to win the national championship than everybody else? Yep, probably so. But their gap and the gap between them and everybody else is at least starting to shrink. Is there a gap? Yes, is it starting to shrink? Absolutely.

And I think that's a good thing for college football. I think it's a really good thing for college football. As we now enter into this era of the 12-team playoff, I'm interested to see how the combination of NIL, in terms of spreading out the top players, and the combination of that and more teams being at least a participant in the playoff, how that affects the recruiting rankings as we move forward. Last thing that I would say on this subject is another way to look at this,

is you can look at it as the average player rating. You can also look at it from a perspective of the top 20 players overall in the country. And if you look at the top 20 players overall in the country and the composite rankings, composite meaning you take all the services and you average them all out, here's the top 20 players as we rank them. 16 of those went to different schools. There were 16 schools represented in those top 20. That's remarkable.

By the way, even if Jordan Seaton went to Maryland, it would still be the 16 out of the top 20 players would be 16 different teams represented. I should stop saying 16 of the top 20 players. There are 16 schools represented, programs represented in the top 20 players. That's a lot. That's more than we've seen over the last few years. And certainly from four years ago, five years ago. And again, I do believe that the reason that's the case is because if you're one of those top 20 players,

you should and probably do expect that school's best NIL deal. Well, guess what? Not every school can give the best NIL deal. So everybody has the opportunity to play at that game. For these players, I do want to talk. Normally, I'm giving information to the fans. But I'm hoping some players watch this. And here's the reason is because signing days in a lot of ways can feel like a finish line at the end of what was a really long journey.

Now, I'm not totally familiar because I wasn't highly recruited. But I do know that a lot of these players that were highly recruited have been recruited and they have been told how great they are for three and four years, like constantly, constantly. And my biggest piece of advice for every player that signed a letter of intent this national signing day, whether you're a top five player like Dylan Rayola or you're a player that nobody knows his name, is that this is not a finish line. This is a starting line. Okay?

And your future is not going to be based on what has happened to this point. Your future is going to be based on, and your success is going to be based on what happens from this point forward. Nobody cares once you walk in that locker room. I can guarantee you this, guarantee you this. Nobody in your new locker room gives a crap how many stars you had.

Nobody. All they care about is if you can help the team win. Period. Can you help the team win? Nobody cares. work harder. Nobody cares. You've been told for three and four years that you're the greatest thing since sliced bread. Nobody cares in that new locker room until they know how hard you'll work, how much you'll

study, and how much you can help them win football games. Because that's all this is about. That's all this is about is can we go win football games? Now, are there ancillary benefits? Of course. And there's more now than there has ever Ben, you should be, I think, thankful in a lot of ways that you're a player in this era. And you know what? Capitalize on that. There's no doubt build value for yourself and for your family. But when it comes to that locker room, nobody cares.

Nobody cares. Because today is just a starting line. And now you've got to go prove it. You've got to go prove your worth. Your stars are not going to get you a starting position. Production does. Your ability to practice well. your ability to work hard in the weight room.

Those of you that view this as a starting line, that view this as the point where you're going to go get something done, you will have the most successful college football careers. That'll do it for us today here on the Joel Class Show. Next week after Christmas, we've got the New Year 6 preview. We'll have the semi-final preview, the playoff preview after that next week. But I will not talk to you between now and Christmas. So from my family to yours, I just pray that you have a happy and healthy Christmas.

Certainly the reason for the season around our house is the birth of Jesus Christ. That's what we celebrate. But whatever you celebrate with you and your family, I just wish you the very best. And I hope hopefully you have one of those holidays that you'll always remember. So thank you for listening to the show. have a Merry Christmas. I'll talk to you next week with a New Year 6 preview as we break down those bowl games. Have a great Christmas, everyone.