Where Notre Dame’s 2025 class ranks after Dallas Golden’s commitment
Notre Dame has a nation-leading 20 commitments in the 2025 class, which is an impressive number to have prior to May. But should/does having the most verbal pledges give the Irish the No. 1 class in the country?
Dissecting team recruiting rankings seven months prior to National Signing Day is mostly trivial, especially when the ranking is based on who has the most commitments, such as the case is at Rivals, which takes into account a team’s 20 top-ranked commitments. So, up to 20 verbals, it’s a popularity contest. And with Notre Dame’s big class early on, the Irish have the top class in the land per Rivals.
On3’s team recruiting ranking (more details on that shortly) uses an average of player rankings, which makes this exercise paint a bit of a better picture of how ND’s class stacks up with the other elites of the country.
On Sunday, Notre Dame landed a commitment from Tampa (Fla.) Berkeley Prep’s Dallas Golden, who became the Irish’s third-highest ranked commit of the class. He is the nation’s No. 104 overall prospect and No. 12 safety according to the 2025 On3 Industry Ranking.
Notre Dame has the No. 5 class in the country with a “score” of 92.819. Ohio State has the top group in the country with a score of 95.887, followed by LSU, USC and Clemson, respectively. Clemson’s score sits at 93.624, so the Irish have a bit of work to do to climb past the Tigers into the No. 4 spot.
Rounding out the top 10 is Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Auburn and Florida State. The Crimson Tide’s class score is 92.450.
Notre Dame has 12 four-star commits and eight three-star commits thus far. We’re less than eight months until signing day for the 2025 class, and the Irish’s class only has about five or six spots left.
The Irish’s highest-ranked commit of the class is Winter Garden (Fla.) West Orange’s Ivan Taylor, the No. 53 overall prospect and No. 6 safety in America per the 2025 On3 Industry Ranking.
Below is a look at the top 10 schools according to the 2025 Industry Team Recruiting Rankings, as of Tuesday morning.
Understanding On3’s team rankings system
The On3 Industry Team Recruiting Ranking utilizes all four major recruiting media companies: On3, 247Sports, Rivals and ESPN.
Instead of a total points system like at Rivals, the On3 Industry Team Ranking uses a score average of the player rankings, which solves the problem of varying class sizes during the recruiting cycle. It compiles the highest-rated commits for each team up to a total based on a rolling average of current total commitments among Power Five schools.
The current average number of commits in the 2025 class used in the rankings score is 6. This means that of Notre Dame’s 20 commitments, only the six highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.
To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 20 commits have an average recruit rating of 89.64, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Only Notre Dame’s top six commits are being used in the Industry Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 92.819 — this is the number used for the class ranking, as seen in the image above.
With this model, there are no bonus points for having more commitments than other teams, and only small deductions occur when a team has fewer commitments than the rolling average. Unlike distribution (bell) curves, this model doesn’t disproportionately weight a team’s top three or four highest-rated commits and is a more accurate representation of an entire class.
