Alabama Football: Conflicting Team Rankings for Tide ’23 commits

Alabama Football is slowly building its 2023 class. So far, the Alabama Crimson Tide has three verbal commits. Many other programs are in the seven to ten range of verbal commits. Texas Tech has a high of 15 verbals.

Is Alabama Football seriously lagging having only three? April is not a time to come to such a negative conclusion. There are plenty of factors affecting where the Tide stands.

One factor is Nick Saban’s patience. The Tide head coach often compels recruits to take their time to be sure about a commitment. Another factor is the Crimson Tide pursues a high number of elite recruits. Few elite recruits are in any hurry to make a college decision.

There is another wrinkle that is rapidly changing recruiting cycles. Building rosters through high school players remains essential. But, transfer players have become a major resource in roster rebuilds. For some schools, not signing a full class of high school recruits is the best strategy. Leaving room to add a half dozen, or more transfer players has become important.

Alabama Football – Recruiting and Transfers

Nick Saban and Alabama Football have hit transfer jackpots in the last few roster rebuild cycles. The difference with the Crimson Tide and many other programs is the Tide does not need the Transfer Portal for numbers. Nick Saban only wants transfer players with a good chance to become starters.

By contrast, with transfer season still spinning, Ole Miss and LSU have added 14 transfer players to next season’s rosters.

All of the above means signing a No. 1 class does not mean what it did five years ago. The Alabama football fans who worry the Crimson Tide is lagging with only three commits point to the rankings source, 247Sports Composite. The Composite averages the rankings from 247Sports, Rivals and ESPN. In the current Composite, the Crimson Tide has the No. 25 class.

A new source from On3.com ranks teams on the basis of the average rating of each commit or signee. Based on that calculation, Alabama has the No. 4 class, behind USC, Notre Dame and Georgia. The marked difference can also be seen in the Texas Tech ranking. The Red Raiders are No. 2 in the 247Sports Composite and No. 15 in the On3 ranking.

In fairness to 247Sports, numerical ratings for teams and individual players are also available. The Composite just does not rank the teams using that data.

Quality has always counted more than quantity for Nick Saban and the ’23 class will be filled with it again.