Underachievers: Power 5
| TEAM | RANK | 247 | +/- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Arkansas | 103 | 30 | -73 |
| 2 |  Rutgers | 112 | 54 | -58 |
| 3 |  Florida State | 61 | 5 | -56 |
| 4 |  Maryland | 87 | 32 | -55 |
| 5 |  UCLA | 71 | 16 | -55 |
| 6 |  Illinois | 108 | 55 | -53 |
| 7 |  Nebraska | 76 | 25 | -51 |
| 8 |  Tennessee | 62 | 13 | -49 |
| 9 |  Vanderbilt | 99 | 51 | -48 |
| 10 |  Kansas | 117 | 70 | -47 |
The clear standout here is Florida State. It’s hard to believe a program that won a national title as recently as the Seminoles did could slide like this. Jimbo Fisher had them recruiting at a steady top-five level in the final years of his tenure. Did he actually leave behind a top-five roster when he departed for Texas A&M? No, not quite. But a bad coaching hire and a ton of attrition and instability can cause any program to take a dramatic step backward.
Arkansas has proved over the last decade that, even with several coaching changes, it can recruit at a top-30 level pretty much every year. Sure, the SEC West is a tough place to live. But the Razorbacks are able to get good enough players that it should never get as bad as it did under Chad Morris. They finished No. 105 and No. 114 in the Massey ratings during Morris’ two-year tenure, and that’s why they top this list. Second-year coach Sam Pittman is getting Arkansas pointed back in the right direction and is going to fix this.
UCLA is another curious case, a program that recruited at a top 15-20 level under Jim Mora and then went through both a major roster purge under Chip Kelly and a decline in the recruiting rankings. They’re a big underachiever here based on the Mora-era recruiting results. Kelly’s full recruiting cycles have yielded an average class ranking of 35th. That’s … one way to underachieve less. UCLA’s Massey rating has improved slightly in each of Kelly’s three seasons, but it’s about time for the Bruins to start getting much better on the field.
Among the six programs here that have recently shown they can recruit at a top-30 level — Florida State, Tennessee, UCLA, Nebraska, Arkansas and Maryland — it will be interesting to see which ones can bounce back in a meaningful way the fastest. And let’s not overlook Rutgers, which is making big strides in recruiting this year.
