Miami dominates the ACC two days a year: at the ACC Kickoff, and on signing day. Yesterday, being signing day, was thus a good day for fans of The U.
First-year UM coach Mario Cristobal inked the conference’s top-rated signing class, with the 26-player class including three five-stars and 14 (gulp!) four-stars.
The 2023 class ranked fourth nationally, behind Alabama, Georgia and Texas, which signed the nation’s top overall recruit, QB Arch Manning.
Miami fans might know to not get too excited about the value of wins on signing day.
The average national recruiting rank for Miami over the past 10 years is 16.7, which would seem to imply that the program would be a perennial Top 25 team, right, based on the availability of top-flight personnel?
Miami’s record over the past 10 years is 75-51, basically, 7-5 each year, and the ‘Canes finished just three of those 10 seasons in the Top 25 – 23rd in 2016, 11th in 2017 and 22nd in 2020.
Miami was 5-7 in Year 1 under Cristobal after being picked at the ACC Kickoff to win the Coastal Division.
The writers love Miami as much as the recruiting analysts do: Miami has been picked to win the Coastal six times, though The U would go on to win just one division title, in 2017.
Clemson, which does well on signing day each year, and then goes out and actually wins games in the fall, had the 11th-ranked class in 2023.
Good news for Florida State fans, whose program experienced a bit of a resurgence this year after five years of mediocrity: Mike Norvell, in his third season, signed the 20th-ranked class.
As with Miami, the word of caution at FSU is, its past five classes averaged 18.8 in the national rankings, but over that five-year period, the record on the field was 26-33, the last winning season before this year coming way back in 2017, in Jimbo Fisher’s last year in Tallahassee, which ended with a 7-6 mark.
Mack Brown at North Carolina was just outside the Top 25 this signing day, with his 2023 class ranking 26th.
Brown’s first four classes ranked 30th (in 2019), 14th (in 2020 and 2021) and 11th (in 2022), an average of 17.3.
Brown’s record through four seasons: 30-21.
Other ACC classes of note:
- Louisville, which has a new coach, Jeff Brohm, late of Purdue, held together the #30 class pieced together by Scott Satterfield, who bolted for Cincinnati (whose class, put together by the staff of Luke Fickell, now at Wisconsin, ranked 72nd).
- Virginia Tech first-year coach Brent Pry did well for himself, signing the 35th-ranked class. The class that he had to hold together from the staff of Justin Fuente ranked 36th in 2022.
- Also in the Top 50 from the ACC: NC State (43), Wake Forest (47), Pitt (48), Duke (49).
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Chris Graham
