Notre Dame holding steady in top five of 2026 team football recruiting rankings

At the start of this past week week, Notre Dame had the No. 4 class in the country, and after commitments around the nation — including two for the Fighting Irish — the Irish remain in that spot and are closing in on No. 3.

On Friday and Saturday, the Irish landed commitments from linebacker Kobe Clapper and running back Javian Osborne, respectively. Clapper checks in as the No. 372 overall prospect and No. 30 linebacker nationally, while Osborne ranks as the No. 106 recruit and No. 8 running back in the country. Osborne is Notre Dame’s second-highest ranked commit of its 2026 class.

Six of the Irish’s 14 commitments have occurred since April. Notre Dame ranked outside the top 10 prior to the spring and surged into the No. 4 spot and are on the heels of overtaking Ohio State at No. 3. The Irish have a class “score” of 92.673, while Ohio State is at 92.920.

USC and LSU have the top two classes, respectively. Texas A&M rounds out the top five, followed by Alabama, Oregon, Clemson, Penn State and Miami, in that order. There’s quite the gap between the Fighting Irish and Aggies, with the score of Mike Elko‘s squad at 92.137.

Notre Dame has one five-star pledge, 10 four-stars committed and a trio of three-stars in the class. The blue-chip ratio for the class sits at a strong 79 percent.

It’s obviously very early in the 2026 cycle with less than seven months until National Signing Day in December. But the way On3 does its team rankings (more on that later) is meant to try to give an more accurate picture on what it all could look like at the end of the cycle, rather than have a ranking that favors who has the most commitments.

This cycle marks Marcus Freeman’s fourth full recruiting class as Notre Dame head coach. In 2023, the Irish signed the No. 10 class, and Notre Dame had the No. 11 group in America back in the 2024 cycle. And for the 2025 class, the slight downward rankings trend continued, as Notre Dame signed the No. 12 group.

For what it’s worth, Freeman was the defensive coordinator for the 2022 cycle and then head coach for the last few weeks before signing day. The Irish signed the No. 6 class that year.

Below is a look at the top 10 schools according to the 2026 Industry Team Recruiting Rankings, as of Sunday afternoon.

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 2026 class used in the rankings score is 7. This means that of Notre Dame’s 14 commitments, only the seven highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.

To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 14 commits have an average recruit rating of 90.93, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Only Notre Dame’s top seven commits are being used in the Industry Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 92.673 — 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.