Assessing The Winners And Losers Of National Signing Day

With the College Football Playoff on the horizon and conference championship games still yet to be played, you would be forgiven if you forgot that yesterday was National Signing Day.

Chalk it up as just another casualty of the insanity that is the modern college football calendar, but what was once a national holiday for college fans is now an afterthought.

That doesn't mean there wasn't plenty of drama, and we keep score when it comes to recruiting, meaning there are some winners and losers from yesterday's festivities.

Let's assess which programs won the day and who woke up with a lump of coal in their signing day stockings.

All rankings use the 247Sports Composite Rankings.

Winners

Notre Dame (Class Rank: 3rd)

Sometimes no news is good news on signing day, and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish enjoyed a drama-free NSD while signing their highest rated class of the College Football Playoff era.

Their four composite five-stars are tied for the most in the country, and a class like this looks similar to a Georgia or Alabama class in recent years.

This is the type of recruiting profile that only elite programs exhibit, and Marcus Freeman is about to turn the Irish into a juggernaut if he keeps reeling in classes like this.

Virginia Tech (Class Rank: 22nd)

This one is a two-parter, so hang with me.

For starters, the Hokies hired head coach James Franklin less than three weeks before National Signing Day, so the fact they were even able to field a full recruiting class is a minor miracle.

But, not only did Virginia Tech stay afloat, they soared through national signing day, skyrocketing up into the top-25 for the first time since 2018.

There were more flips than a pancake buffet for the Hokies (most of which came from a certain school we will talk about later), which always makes for a fun signing day.

I had a feeling Franklin would be able to recruit the Tidewater area very well, and we are seeing that come to fruition even earlier than I had anticipated.

Vanderbilt (Class Rank: 31st)

Looks like 2025 is shaping up to be the Year of the Commodore, and Wednesday was no different.

Vandy is on the doorstep of the College Football Playoff, but the future looks bright, as it flipped five-star signal caller Jared Curtis from Georgia, its first five-star signee in program history.

They're set to sign a class that is knocking on the door of the top-30, nearly unprecedented in Nashville, and flipped another prospect from a high-level program (Alabama) while it was at it.

The momentum for Vanderbilt isn't going anywhere thanks to coach Clark Lea's extension, so get used to it. 

Losers

Georgia (Class Rank: 5th)

It's hard to call someone who finished with a top-5 class a "loser," but Georgia fans would probably agree with this one as well.

This 2026 class is the worst one for Georgia since Kirby Smart's transition class (a coach's first recruiting class) a decade earlier, and it's the first time they haven't signed multiple composite five-stars since Smart took over in 2016.

The Bulldogs have created an absolute death machine of a recruiting apparatus in Athens, so don't feel too sorry for them, but this is certainly a concerning data point for the Dawgs.

Ohio State (Class Rank: 6th)

Another school that falls into the "have" rather than the "have not" category, Ohio State's sixth-ranked class seems like an elite class upon first blush.

However, just like Georgia, the expectations are much higher, especially on the heels of a national championship.

What's worse, the Buckeyes' lone five-star commit, uber-talented wide receiver Chris Henry Jr., is weighing his options after Brian Hartline – the architect of Ohio State's WR room for the past decade – accepted the USF head coaching gig.

Should the Buckeyes hold onto Henry, they could salvage this class, but if the centerpiece to their 2026 class decides to look elsewhere, it could tank a recruiting effort that is already teetering on the edge of disaster by Ohio State's standards.

Penn State (Class Rank: 150th)

Okay, I've avoided the elephant in the room for as long as possible, but Penn State's Chernobyl-level meltdown during the tail end of the 2026 recruiting cycle will be studied for centuries.

The good news: its class average sits around 90.00, which is higher than teams like Florida State and Oklahoma who reside in the top-20.

The bad news: the Nittany Lions only have two recruits in their signing class, which sits at a paltry 150th.

This is allbecause of one of the big winners, Virginia Tech, hiring Penn State's former head coach, James Franklin.

I wrote about how Franklin could very well just import his class from State College down to Blacksburg, and that's more or less what he did.

The bungled coaching search certainly isn't helping matters, and if Penn State wants to field a competitive team next fall, it may have to load up on transfer portal players for years to come to offset the damage done here.

Sad times in Happy Valley.