Top 10 Recruiting Classes That Have Been Busts In the Rivals Era

Jul 26, 2013; Culver City, CA, USA; Southern California head coach Lane Kiffin speaks to the media during PAC-12 media day held at the Sony Studios Lot. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

We know that recruiting is hard in college football. If building relationships, selling your school, and keeping guys in the program were not hard enough, they pale in comparison to the evaluation process.

Even more so than the NFL Draft, the human element in recruiting has created so many college football busts along with failed overall classes. How can you determine if a guy in high school is only good because of his competition, and how can you be sure that guys is going to stay with the program?

What we do know, however, is a string of bad classes have set quite a few schools on a long, downward spiral in the past. And some of those schools are still struggling to climb out of those holes.

Missing on major 5-star recruits is far worse than picking up an underwhelming class of mediocre players. The last thing you ever want to do is waste a ton of time and a scholarship on lots of players who underperform, but that is exactly what happens.

The history of Rivals has shown us how difficult and imperfect this whole method is. This post will go back in detail and examine the biggest busts of the Rivals era in football.

Let’s take a look at the Top 10 most failed recruiting classes in the Rivals era that we can confirm.

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