College Football’s second season is nearly finished. National signing day is only 19 days away (February 4). Although there are still plenty of blue chippers out there uncommitted, everybody’s rankings of the 2004 recruiting classes are starting to firm up. However, there have been a few changes in the Official College Sports Network rankings by ESPN.com’s Bill Hodge since my last update. Because Pitt didn’t pull in as many recruits as some other schools did, we have fallen from the 18th ranked class on January 4 to the 22nd ranked class today (in mid-December, we had been ranked as high as #14). Losing either Anthony Morelli or Andrew Johnson to Ohio State, Penn State, or UCLA would surely knock us out of the rankings altogether.
Since my last update on the aforementioned OCSN/Bill Hodge rankings, Ohio State has climbed up two more spots to #4, Michigan has fallen behind LSU and USC to #3, Penn State has remained stuck at #8 (the Lions seem to been at #8 forever now), Maryland has remained at #10, Boston College has fallen a spot to #24, and the Panthers remain the only loyal Big East team ranked at all. Here’s the whole list.
No. 1 LSU
Tie No. 1 Southern California (Top JCs)
No. 3 Michigan
No. 4 Ohio State
No. 5 Oklahoma
No. 6 Texas
No. 7 Miami-Florida
No. 8 Penn State
No. 9 Georgia
No. 10 Maryland
No. 11 Alabama
No. 12 Texas A&M
No. 13 Missouri
No. 14 Florida
No. 15 UCLA (Top JCs)
No. 16 Tennessee
No. 17 Washington
No. 18 Florida State
No. 19 Oregon
No. 20 Michigan State
No. 21 Kansas State (Top JCs)
No. 22 PITTSBURGH
No. 23 Texas Tech (Top JCs)
No. 24 Boston College
No. 25 Iowa
Tie No. 25 Purdue
Superprep.com (powered by TheInsiders.com Recruiting Network) has its own ranking of the 2004 college football recruiting classes thus far. Pitt falls out of the Superprep ranking entirely. However, Michigan is at #3, Ohio State is at #6, Penn State is STILL at #8, Maryland is at #9, Virginia Tech (unranked in Hodge’s list) comes in at #22, and Boston College (like Pitt) is unranked.
There’s your latest roundup. I look at these rankings on a fairly regular basis, so I’ll update everybody if something changes (especially if we lose one of our big boys).
Hail to PennDOT’s finding some way to de-ice the roads that doesn’t involve cinders which chip up the paint on my freakin’ car.
