2012 Recruiting Cycle: Clemson/ACC Coastal Comparison

We compared Clemson's 2012 recruiting class to others in the ACC Atlantic previously. Now we'll make the same comparison with our Coastal foes and gauge how our Tigers' entering talent matches up with others on the conferences' other side.

We should not have to tell you this, but some folks debate what to take from these articles and the data presented here. We expect you, the reader, to form an opinion of your own. Often we will give you our take on things, but you should independently form your own thoughts based on all information available to you. When evaluating a particular player, we encourage you to view film for yourself and form your own opinions about a player. This article shows recruiting data for individual teams. It does not weigh experience nor does it evaluate coaching, preparation, etc... We think this is an interesting and valuable tool that is useful in overall program evaluation because there is a link between these star ratings and other metrics in both college football and the NFL.

Keep in mind as you look through this data that only players who were officially signed were given a "Star Rating". Players who were not signed could not be quantitatively assessed a recruiting rating. Such players get a "NA" rating and were not included in the averaged data. Again, all data was attained from www.Scout.com and www.Rivals.com. A player whose Scout/Rivals data was not available but was signed was assigned a "NR". We picked carefully through the data and believe all is correct. However, if we've overlooked an item we apologize in advance and ask that you point it out so that we can make the correction in our database.

The Table below shows core data for the 2012 teams within the Atlantic Division of the ACC. The charts that follow give a graphical description of the date featured in this table.

In the stars per player category, Clemson was the class of the field trailed closely by Miami. Clemson and Miami were the lone schools to grade out above 3 stars per player by both ranking services. Virginia Tech had a Scout/Rivals combined rating of 3.0 stars and Ga Tech, UNC, and VT each averaged better than three stars per player via the Rivals rating system. Clemson brought in 20 players in this class. This was tied with Duke for second lowest and ahead of only GT (17 signees). Miami signed half the state (33 players this period) while VT loaded up with 28 signatures. The Coastal Division average was 24.5 players per class.

While Clemson lagged others in the Coastal in numbers signed, the recruited talent should more than make up for lower numbers. As we've discussed before, class size is largely dependent on many things so more signees could be attained for various reasons and most coaches choose to bring in fewer than allowed (25) because that's just how the numbers work out with an 85 scholarship count.