ESPN Puts Utah at 33 in its Recruting Rankings

[The Miami Ute]

ESPN puts Utah as #33 in the nation.

In the Big XII, only TCU and KSU had higher-rated recruiting classes. Colorado is rated #34 or just right behind Utah.

Here’s the write-up:

33. Utah Utes

ESPN 300 commits: 0
Top offensive prospect: QB Wyatt Becker
Top defensive prospect: LB Christian Thatcher

Ranking entering Wednesday: 33

The Utes went into California to land their QB in four-star Wyatt Becker. He is a passer with a strong arm and smooth release who can also run well and make plays with his feet. On defense, Cyrus Polu is a nice in-state addition. An MVP performer at this spring’s Under Armour camp, he is a prospect who can be a well-rounded defender with further development and maximization of his physical tools. They further strengthened their LB corps with four-star LB Christian Thatcher, who is an aggressive player and can be a presence sideline to sideline. He tallied more than 400 tackles over his high school career. Sione Motuapuaka is a valuable and underrated addition to their trenches. Projected to DT, he is a tough and explosive big man who can contribute on either side of the ball, as he has started games on both the defensive and offensive line for national power program Bishop Gorman.

Here’s a shocker though…ESPN has Clemson at #37, probably the lowest they’ve ranked, well, certainly during the Dabo Swinney era, and well below their in-state rival, South Carolina, who clocks in at #20.

[Yergensen]

Thanks Miami.

247 composite, popular opinion’s best recruiting rating source and metric, has us #44 in composite avg talent score per recruit.

By same source and metric:
We were #36 in 2024.
We were #24 in 2023.
We were #36 in 2022.

[The Miami Ute]

Yes, there’s a big disconnect between the rankings at ESPN and those at 24/7. For example, 24/7 has Miami at #4 while ESPN has them down at #13. 24/7 has Clemson at #11 and ESPN has them at #37. Ranking inflation? I don’t know.

[EagleMountainUte]

Kind of weird. Recruiting has never really been an exciting thing for me. Now with free agency I doubt we see any of these kids on the field. (Sorry Wyatt Becker but young QBs are not that exciting).

I am assuming it is the Dampier show this year. It is certainly a part of the program but free agency is right now the best way to improve your team.

[COUte]

Seems generous. Feels like we’re taking a step back this year with HS recruits. Hopefully some of these kids outperform their ratings like Utah recruits have always been known to do…. back when you could actually develop recruits.

[UteNamedOg]

You’d be hard pressed to find another team who started ten (I think) QBs the past two years. I’m okay with a recruit who gets dinged for a slow 40 because he has obscenely thick and durable joints in his knees and ankles.

[UteNamedOg]

You’d be hard pressed to find another team who started ten (I think) QBs the past two years. I’m okay with a recruit who gets dinged for a slow 40 because he has obscenely thick and durable joints in his knees and ankles.

[Tednab]

Cool story.. How’s their retention ranking

[Jim Vanderhoof]

Thanks Miami. I’d be curious to know if NIL valuation from incoming freshman is based on their ratings? How many of the new recruits have any chance of being physically and mentally ready to play immediately.

[krindor]

Here is a good way of looking at where we actually rank

It’s generally hard to measure a recruiting class – 247 has their rankings, but frankly put way too much emphasis on class size – especially in a transfer portal era where its not always helpful to fill more spots. And looking at average recruit rating is an improvement over that… but can unfairly penalize teams that recruit more players – there’s no way a 3 person class of 90,90,90 should be above a 4 person class of 91,91,91,86.

So the best/easiest way I’ve found to do this is to look at the recruit average for the top X players in the class. Which I have a visualization tool here that allows us to do that. This compares Utah’s 2025 class to every other Big 12 team’s class

(Note that this uses score above 85, just to zoom in to the actual relevant scores. If the average recruit for a P4 school drops below 85 with all the rating inflation that has happened…well that’s a huge problem)

And this tells me a few things about Utah’s current recruiting. Note that when you’re just looking at the smallest class sizes, Utah starts near the bottom. Our top recruits (who I’m very excited about) aren’t on par (ratings-wise) with the rest of the conference. And that’s REALLY hard to recover from since those recruits are averaged into EVERY calculation.

But you’ll also note that as the class gets larger, Utah keeps ascending those rankings. Which is a good indication that we got a LOT more very good players than most schools (even if we didn’t get the one or two elite headliners). By comparison, look how high Kansas St starts (Linkon Cure) … And then how they fail to maintain that and consistently drop down.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the class, but also cognizant how much better it would look (by these metrics) if we’d managed to land a Jerome Myles, Iose Epenesa or Aaron Dunn

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