Where Notre Dame’s 2025 class ranks following a busy February
Notre Dame continued its hot start of the 2025 cycle in the month of February, adding four new commitments to its class that has the most verbals in the country, by far.
Offensive linemen Owen Strebig and Matty Augustine joined the fold, and the Irish landed somewhat surprising wide receiver commitments from Elijah Burress and Shaun Terry.
Notre Dame has 17 pledges in the 2025 class, and the next closest to that tally is Penn State with 11. Clemson and Oklahoma are tied for third at 10.
While it is very early on in the class, Rivals’ and 247 Sports’ team rankings list the Fighting Irish as the No. 1 team in the country. But according to the 2025 On3 Industry Ranking Football Team Recruiting Rankings, Notre Dame’s class currently ranks No. 5.
What gives?
The bottom of this article will explain in more detail, but in short, the other team rankings are more of a popularity contest this early in the cycle — the more commits the school has, the higher their ranking will be. However, On3’s team rankings formula is a more accurate representation of an entire class and do a better job of mirroring what the rankings may look like at the end of the year.
Notre Dame is off to a strong start to the class, but again, their team ranking per other sites is more due to having the most commits in the country, which shouldn’t be the most critical factor. As good as the Irish’s class is, it’s unlikely Notre Dame holds the top spot down.
Notre Dame has 10 four-star commits and seven three-star commits thus far. We’re less than 10 months until signing day for the 2025 class, and the Irish’s class is more than half-full already.
The group is headlined by Lucedale (Miss.) George County’s Deuce Knight, who ranks as the nation’s No. 55 overall player and No. 5 quarterback 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 Saturday 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 4. This means that of Notre Dame’s 17 commitments, only the four highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.
To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 17 commits have an average recruit rating of 89.56, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Notre Dame’s top four commits are only being used in the Industry Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 92.911 — 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.
