In today's newsletter ...

• WSU football recruiting is hanging in there

  • Where we stand

  • Breaking it down

  • Where is this leading us?

• Welcome(?), Anne McCoy!

WSU football recruiting is hanging in there

WSU hosted a whole bunch of football recruits toward the end of June,¹ leading to a surge of commitments that more than quintupled the size of Jake Dickert’s class — from 3 at the end of May to 17 today, following the Monday commitment of offensive lineman Brayden Walton. Additionally, the guys we’ve landed in July are a pretty considerable step up from the earliest commitments (in terms of their 247Sports evaluations, anyway).

There’s still plenty of work to be done, but with college football now having entered the “dead period”² — which is an unsurprisingly slow time for commitments — and not much else going on this summer, this seems like an excellent time to take stock of the current class.

Where we stand

I’m certain I wasn’t alone in worrying about what the move away from the Pac-12 would mean for the overall talent level at WSU. Since we’re all hoping/praying/dreaming that the Cougs land in a power conference again — rather than being a part of absorbing the MWC into what would be a G5 Pac-12 (albeit probably a high-level one) — it’s so important to maintain a talent level that will allow us to win plenty of games and retain our status as being a clear notch above the MWC programs we’ll be playing for a couple of years.

In that regard, I’d say our high school recruiting is more or less … fine. At the very least, it certainly hasn’t cratered, even if there remains work to do.

With the 17 commitments in the fold, WSU currently ranks 69th⁸ by 247Sports’ evaluations. That’s a bit down from where our high school⁵ recruits have been for the past four recruiting cycles (which, of course, coincides with Dickert assuming control of the program):

Relative to years past, the biggest factor in the dip is this: A lack of high-end recruits at the top of the class.

A big thing to keep in mind is that 247Sports’ ranking isn’t a straight average; it actually gives extra weight to high-end guys. This makes logical sense! The teams with the most high-end guys tend to be the most successful ones. It’s good to be deep, but elite players have disproportionate effects on outcomes.³ And while WSU has rarely been in the mix for truly “elite” players — heck, we’ve only landed a guy with a consensus 4-star rating 17 times in the 20+ years recruiting services have been around — the Cougs typically have recruited at least a handful of what would be considered “high-3-star” guys at the top of each class. And that, to be honest, is what has distinguished our ranking from MWC teams and allowed us to compete in the Pac-12.⁷

At the moment, we don’t have any of those guys.

Breaking it down

Over the years, virtually all high school players WSU has signed — much like their non-CFP-competing peer programs — have been classified as “3-star.” This is no surprise in the sense that roughly 90% of the 3,000-plus players who sign with FBS schools are rated 3 stars by 247 after being given evaluation scores between 80 and 89.⁴

Clearly, with that many players, there’s going to be a wide range of ability in there. To that end, it’s a lot more useful to makes sense of WSU’s recruiting trends by putting players into the “bins” that 247 itself uses to distinguish between different levels of 3-star players.⁶

Paraphrasing 247’s own language, they are:

• High-3-star (87 to 89) — Expected to be multi-year starters and impact players at the Power Five/Four level with NFL upside. Guys rated 88 or 89 are still roughly in the top 20% of the overall class, so that’s a big deal.

• Mid-3-star (84 to 86) — Not projected as future NFL prospects, but will be expected to play and start at the Power Five/Four level.

• Low-3-star (83 and below) — Expected to be Power Five/Four roster fillers or Group of Five starters or FCS impact players.

Here’s how 2025 (so far) compares to the previous four classes. Note that 2023 and 2022 were the only two out of the five classes to be ranked inside the top 60:

Another way to look at it is considering each bin as a proportion of the overall class, which is more of an apples-to-apples comparison since the classes aren’t the same size:

The 2022 class, in particular, is a great example of why 247Sports does it the way it does. While 2022 has the smallest “mid” group and biggest “low” group, note that most of the players who were rated as “high” — Buddah Al-Uqdah, Hudson Cederland, Djouvensky Schlenbaker, and Andre Dollar — have already been big contributors and are slated for even bigger roles this year. Another one, Zack Miller, is developing nicely and projected to be the backup left tackle as a redshirt sophomore. That’s a damn good hit rate.

It’s still a litttttle early to render judgment on 2023 with just one season under their belts, but among those, Esa Pole immediately stepped into the starting left tackle role as a juco transfer, and Leo Pulalasi — the top player in the class — looked like a legit running back option from the jump and might be the starter this year. The second-rated player in the class, Warren Smith, is one of only five scholarship corners on the roster and will have a huge opportunity to make a difference this season.

Where is this leading us?

To be honest, I think we’re in an OK spot.

Presuming there aren’t a bunch of decommits leading up to the early signing day in December, Dickert will add 8-10 more high school/juco kids to this class. That’s an opportunity, particularly if the Cougs can start hot in September against their Power Four opponents — here’s to guessing there will be a lot of official visits on Sept. 7 when we play Texas Tech, and wins over the Red Raiders and then Washington would demonstrate to recruits that WSU is still a cut above G5 status.

And I think that’s another thing that’s important to remember: Staying a cut above the MWC really is the ultimate goal here. Although there surely are at least a couple of immediate contributors in here, the effects of the high schoolers in this class won’t really be felt until at least the 2026 season. If Florida State and Clemson blow up the ACC or whatever in the meantime and WSU/Oregon State land in the Big 12 before these guys ever step foot on campus, we’ll have some ground to make up, but it won’t be the end of the world — we will have landed safely, high school recruiting should tick back up, and up-transfers will find us attractive again.

But in the very real possibility that we don’t end up in the Big 12 and wind up absorbing the MWC, WSU needs to be at the absolute top of that pile, in position to win the conference and compete for that G5 CFP spot. To that end, we’re doing a good job of that: Oregon State and the entirety of the MWC are behind us, with only San Diego State (two spots back) even really close.

Welcome(?), Anne McCoy!

OK, it’s not really an actual “welcome” when the person has been with the school for 20+ years, but McCoy was formally introduced as the new AD yesterday. If you’d like a good rundown of the more noteworthy quotes, Cougfan did a nice job of that here.

Or you can watch it for yourself!

1  June 23 marks the end of the so-called “quiet period,” during which coaches can host recruits on campus, but not recruit them in-person off campus.

2  June 24 to July 24: No in-person contact anywhere, although all other forms of communication are fine. Starting on July 25 — coinciding with preseason camp opening — schools can once again host recruits on campus in a “quiet period.”

3  Bud Elliot, a guy I used to work alongside at SB Nation, coined the term “Blue-Chip Ratio.” It’s highly predictive of who can compete for the national championship, and I think the same principal applies down the line.

4  It would be so so so much easier to just reassign the mid-3-star guys as 2-star and the low-3-star guys as 1-star and the non-FBS guys as zero stars, but I guess they have to maintain appearances that they care about guys signing in Division II or something? I suspect this is much more about historical data … and the fact that there would be a lot of very pissed off recruits who would no longer be “3-star”.

5  This also includes juco players. Transfers from Division 1 schools (whether FBS or FCS) are excluded.

6  If you’re interested in taking a deeeeep dive into how 247 evaluates all its guys — including why future NFL prospects is the measuring stick — you can read up on it here.

7  And also probably what kept us from getting all the way over the hump in the Mike Leach era. 🙁

8  If you visit the school’s 247Sports page, you won’t see 69th — you’ll see 80th. However, that ranking should be considered functionally useless to us at the moment for comparison purposes because that one is only based off nine recruits. Here’s why.

247Sports’ most-publicized team rankings are based of its “composite” scores, which are a combination of evaluations from across different recruiting services. It’s a really good way to do it! Consensus is good. However, if a couple of recruiting services haven’t gotten around to evaluating a player — something that is super common right now for players who aren’t being fought over by the top 25 programs — they don’t yet have a composite score. If they don’t yet have a composite score, they aren’t yet factored into the rankings. One such player? Kyle Peterson, the safety who committed last week. He’s got our highest rating from 247Sports’ evaluators, but none of the other three major services have given him a score, so he’s not included in the ranking.

So … yeah. Pretty useless right now! Let’s just stick to the 247Sports evaluations — where every player is evaluated — so we have something to work with.