2023 Expanded Big 12 Recruiting Ranking, Post February Signing Day

Feb 3, 2023 - 3:50 PM

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So National signing day has come and gone and while additional commitments could come from the high school ranks, the recruiting cycle is all but complete for them. With the caveat that we know the final class will look different than it does now, there is still one transfer portal entry window to go through, I thought now would be a good time to look at where KU’s incoming class stands in the new 14-team football conference.

So where does KU stand with the recruiting class? Well, dead last again. Familiar territory for KU recruiting classes. Dead last, just barely, but last. Looking at the table below you can see the 247Sports ranking of recruiting classes for the 14-team conference. There, right at the bottom, just below Cincinnati sits the Jayhawks.

I do have good news though. The 193.28 rating this year is a high point for the Jayhawks since 247Sports started their rankings in 2010 and follows up the 2022 class’s rating of 188.82. The previous high before Lance Leipold’s arrival was 180.28 in 2013 when everyone’s favorite coach, Charlie Weiss, brought in a 35-man class including 18 junior college transfers. But before you go reminiscing about the good ol’ days of Charlie, he also recorded the worst class just the year prior in 2012 with a recorded KU low of 128.27. The class point totals for the 10 recruiting cycles before Lance Leipold, working backward from 2021, were 174.63, 178.97, 172.11, 178.59, 159.35, 159.19, 153.94, 177.14, 180.28, and 128.07.

I also want to acknowledge that the last two recruiting cycles look much better because the talent of the current staff has been able to bring in through the transfer portal. Without changes to the transfer rules, we would still have been looking at a long slow uphill climb to football relevance. Looking at class ranking without transfers for the last two seasons, the current (2023) cycle’s rating point total is 169.8 and the previous (2022) cycle's was 106.28, an all-time low.

So even though KU remains at the bottom of the Big 12 recruiting rankings, they are improving. It just shows what a big talent gap there has been over the years, that even though the current KU staff has begun to improve the quality of players coming to Kansas, there is a long way to go before the talent on the roster truly begins to even out.

There is other good news on the recruiting front, though the 2023 recruiting cycle is still active, KU picked up a commitment from 2024 quarterback Isaiah Marshall. He is a high 3-star (89), on the cusp of a 4-star (90) rating. So that class is off to a very good start.