2024 ACC football recruiting rankings: Florida State rules, while Clemson slips
The perpetually shifting plates of conference realignment have turned league names into numerical punchlines.
The Big Ten will expand to 18 member institutions by next fall. The Big 12 will have 16. The Pac-12, if it still exists by then, pending a series of court rulings, will have just two in Oregon State and Washington State, straggling castoffs their brethren left behind.
When the ACC decided it, too, would add new schools ahead of the 2024 season, the college football world was introduced to a realignment witticism of geographical variety: It's difficult not to chuckle when a league known as the Atlantic Coast Conference includes two schools hard by the Pacific Ocean and a third from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
But such is life in the ACC after Stanford and California were plucked from the Pac-12 wreckage and SMU was finally granted access to a power conference.
Before the new-look ACC kicks off next summer, its football programs will battle on the recruiting trail for the rest of the 2024 cycle. The first checkpoint arrives next week, on Dec. 20, when the early signing period opens and prospects across the country can finalize their commitments.
To preview the action, FOX Sports is analyzing the top recruiting classes from the remaining power conferences using data from the 247Sports Composite. Part one examined the Big 12. Up next, the ACC:
(Note: Ranking information is current as of 12:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, Dec. 14.)
National class ranking: 3
Total commitments: 23
Five-star prospects: 2
Four-star prospects: 15
Three-star prospects: 6
Average rating: 91.94
Highest-ranked player: S KJ Bolden; Buford High School; Buford, Georgia (No. 11 overall, No. 1 S)
On the heels of an undefeated season that nearly propelled Florida State to the College Football Playoff for just the second time, head coach Mike Norvell is on the verge of landing a monumental recruiting class for the Seminoles. It's been seven years since Florida State signed a class that landed among the top 10 nationally, with former coach Jimbo Fisher accomplishing that feat ahead of his final season in Tallahassee in 2017, and it's been eight years since the Seminoles cracked the top three. Norvell's 2024 class is well-positioned to snap that streak with verbal commitments from nine of the top 150 players in the country, including six in the top 70 and two in the top 25. Aside from Bolden, whom the Seminoles plucked from Georgia's backyard, the leading prospect is four-star quarterback Luke Kromenhoek, the No. 5 signal-caller in the class. Kromenhoek performed very well at this year's Elite 11 Finals in California and climbed more than 50 spots to a high-water mark of No. 47 overall in August.
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2. Miami
National class ranking: 7
Total commitments: 28
Five-star prospects: 1
Four-star prospects: 11
Three-star prospects: 16
Average rating: 90.02
Highest-ranked player: DL Justin Scott; St. Ignatius College Prep; Chicago, Illinois (No. 13 overall, No. 3 DL)
For head coach Mario Cristobal, whose first two seasons at Miami produced an overall record of 12-12, the 2024 recruiting cycle has become an interesting dichotomy. At the top of the Hurricanes' class is Scott, a bona fide five-star prospect and one of the most coveted defensive players in the country. That Cristobal successfully flipped Scott's verbal commitment from Ohio State to Miami suggests the Hurricanes can still compete with college football's elite on the recruiting trail despite winning 10 games in a season just once since 2003. The class also includes five more players ranked among the top 100 nationally and 10 from the top 300. But the bottom half of Miami's class is considerably weaker, with 16 verbal commitments from three-star prospects, the program's highest number of three-star pledges since 2016. That means the Hurricanes' No. 7 class ranking is influenced more by volume (28 total recruits) than individual player quality given an average prospect score (90.02) that lands outside the top 15.
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3. Clemson
National class ranking: 15
Total commitments: 18
Five-star prospects: 2
Four-star prospects: 10
Three-star prospects: 6
Average rating: 91.21
Highest-ranked player: LB Sammy Brown; Jefferson High School; Jefferson, Georgia (No. 15 overall, No. 2 LB)
Few coaches in college football history have put together a five-year run like the one Dabo Swinney enjoyed at Clemson from 2015-19. He averaged 13.8 wins per season during that stretch and won national titles in both 2016 and 2018, vaulting the Tigers into college football's upper echelon by only dropping five games in five years. Since then, however, Clemson has regressed, with 12 losses over the last four seasons and a clunky 8-4 record in 2023. Life after generational quarterbacks Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence is proving to be quite tough. Shoddy quarterback play has become arguably the biggest thorn in Swinney's side since Lawrence was taken No. 1 overall in the 2021 NFL Draft. And while this year's recruiting class is respectable enough with two five-star prospects and 10 four-star prospects, none of those players are quarterbacks. In fact, the Tigers don't have a verbal commitment from anyone at that position in the 2024 recruiting cycle with 29 of the top 30 quarterbacks already committed.
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National class ranking: 23
Total commitments: 27
Five-star prospects: 0
Four-star prospects: 8
Three-star prospects: 19
Average rating: 87.84
Highest-ranked player: S Malcolm Ziglar; Fuquay-Varina High School; Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina (No. 168 overall, No. 14 S)
After a run of three consecutive top-15 classes from 2020-22, North Carolina has taken a step back over the last two cycles. The Tar Heels ranked 31st nationally in 2023 and now sit 23rd in the current recruiting cycle, with both slides attributable to the same root cause: subpar in-state recruiting. When head coach Mack Brown put together the country's 11th-best class in 2022, he signed three of the five highest-rated prospects in the state, all of whom were four- or five-star recruits. But in 2023, North Carolina inked just one of the top eight players in the state as Georgia swooped in for a pair, Tennessee did the same and Ohio State secured the top prospect in four-star wideout Noah Rogers. This cycle has been nearly identical, with the Tar Heels only landing one of the top eight players in Ziglar, who is ranked fifth. Two of the state's remaining high-level prospects committed to N.C. State instead, with the others poached by national powers Florida, Michigan, Notre Dame (x2) and Alabama. It's a trend Brown and the Tar Heels must fix in a hurry.
Bonus: Stanford
National class ranking: 27
Total commitments: 25
Five-star prospects: 0
Four-star prospects: 4
Three-star prospects: 21
Average rating: 87.12
Highest-ranked player: DL Benedict Umeh; Avon Old Farms; Avon, Connecticut (No. 120 overall, No. 18 DL)
Welcome, Stanford! Second-year coach Tory Taylor immediately lifted the Cardinal above respectable ACC programs like N.C. State, Georgia Tech, Duke and Pittsburgh with a recruiting class that, as of now, is projected to finish 17 spots higher than last season. Part of that surge is numbers-based, with Taylor securing 25 commitments in his current class after only signing 19 players in 2023. But there's also been a significant uptick in talent, too. The Cardinal landed just a single four-star prospect in last year's cycle and failed to sign a player ranked among the top 400 nationally. This year's class already has verbal commitments from a quartet of four-star prospects, all of whom are ranked inside the top 400. While Umeh is Stanford's highest-ranked commit, the program's biggest victory was landing four-star quarterback Elijah Brown, the No. 12 signal-caller in the class. A standout at traditional power Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California, Brown qualified for the Elite 11 Finals earlier this year and chose the Cardinal over additional scholarship offers from Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Penn State, USC and Washington, among others.
Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter at @Michael_Cohen13.