Where Notre Dame stands in Rivals Industry Team Rankings after Elijah Golden commitment

Notre Dame added to its impressive 2026 class on Saturday afternoon when Sarasota (Fla.) Cardinal Mooney’s Elijah Golden, the No. 191 overall player and No. 19 defensive lineman nationally per the Rivals Industry Ranking, announced his pledge to the Irish over Alabama, Oklahoma and Virginia Tech.

Golden marks 12 Notre Dame commitments who rank inside the top 200 of the Rivals Industry Ranking. For comparison’s sake, the Irish had just seven in the last recruiting cycle, seven in the 2024 class and nine in the 2023 cycle.

In mid-July, a major recruiting ranking update took place. On3’s rankings were rebranded as the Rivals ranking, rendering the old Rivals ranking and its 6.0 scale defunct. The On3 Industry Ranking — which has frequently been used as the source in Blue & Gold recruiting articles — was rebranded as the Rivals Industry Ranking and now equally weighs three outlets: 247Sports, ESPN, and Rivals, to create the most advanced and accurate team ranking in the industry.

At the point of that update, the top five of the Industry Ranking were as follows: Georgia, USC, Notre Dame, Texas A&M and Alabama.

USC, Georgia, Oregon, Notre Dame and Texas make up the current top five, respectively.

Rival fan bases or pessimistic Irish fans may think that Notre Dame will eventually slide to the 10-12 range of the team rankings. But in years past when Notre Dame slipped after a hot start, the Irish would have already dropped down by now. ND has been hot on the trail all summer, landing 11 of 12 uncommitted official visit targets from June.

If the Irish’s current class ranking of No. 4 holds at the end of the cycle, it would be Notre Dame’s best recruiting class on paper since the 2013 cycle, which also finished No. 4 nationally per the Rivals Industry Team Ranking.

Notre Dame has one five-star recruit, 19 four-star players and seven three-star commits in the 2026 class. The blue-chip ratio for the class sits at a strong 74 percent.

This cycle marks Marcus Freeman’s fourth full recruiting class as Notre Dame’s 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. For the 2025 class, the slight downward 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 Rivals’ team rankings system

The Rivals Industry Team Recruiting Ranking utilizes all three major recruiting media companies: Rivals 247Sports and ESPN.

It 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 17. This means that of Notre Dame’s 27 commitments, only the 17 highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.

To further explain: Notre Dame’s 27 commits have an average recruit rating of 90.95, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Only Notre Dame’s top 17 commits are used in the Industry Team Ranking. With that group, the Irish’s score is 92.598 — 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.