Where Notre Dame’s 2024 class ranks on National Signing Day eve

Believe it or not — we are just one day away from National Signing Day. Notre Dame and college football programs across the country will sign around a couple dozen prospects or so, head coaches will praise the class and how the team “met their needs” and there will surely be plenty of flips and drama to occur across the country.

Notre Dame will enter the day with 23 commitments, and Marcus Freeman and Co. expect to sign all of them. As of now, there are not expected to be any high school additions to the class. You may see Notre Dame announce a few of its transfer portal additions as well, such as former Duke quarterback Riley Leonard.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Notre Dame’s class sat in the No. 11 spot in the nation according to the 2024 Industry Ranking Football Team Recruiting Rankings.

It should be noted that the class rankings won’t be finalized until after the all-star games in a few weeks and any leftover movement that occurs during the traditional first Wednesday in February signing day.

If Notre Dame is able to sneak into the top 10 of the rankings, it would mark three straight classes inside the top-10 of the team rankings, which the Irish have not done since 2006-08. While Freeman was the defensive coordinator for much of the 2022 cycle, he was crucial for the Irish’s defensive recruiting and helped Notre Dame hold on to the nation’s No. 6 class. And in 2023, the Irish ended up with the No. 10 class in the country.

During Brian Kelly‘s tenure in South Bend, he didn’t accomplish back-to-back-to-back top-10 classes once. Freeman may accomplish that feat — or at least get very close to do doing so — in his first three classes.

In addition to 23 high school commitments, Notre Dame has five pledges from players in the transfer portal. The commits from the portal are not included in the Industry Rankings.

The headliner of Notre Dame’s class is Glen Ellyn (Ill.) Glenbard South’s Cam Williams, who is the nation’s No. 28 overall prospect and No. 9 wide receiver according to the On3 Industry Ranking. On3’s own rankings have Williams as the No. 25 prospect and No. 6 wide receiver in America. This is the highest ranking among the individual websites. Each of the other websites have Williams between No. 9-11 in the land as a receiver and between No. 34-50 in the national rankings.

Williams ranks as a five-star prospect per the On3 Industry Ranking. Notre Dame has 12 four-star players and No. 10 three-star prospects committed in the 2024 cycle.

Below is a look at the top 10 schools according to the 2024 Industry Team Recruiting Rankings, as of Tuesday 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 used in the rankings score is 17. This means that of Notre Dame’s 23 commitments, only the 17 highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.

To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 23 commits have an average recruit rating of 90.77, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Notre Dame’s top 17 commits are only being used in the Industry Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 91.764 — this is the number used for the class ranking. The Irish are just under Auburn, the program in the No. 10 spot.

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.