Alabama's 2017 Recruiting Class Was the Best Collection of College Football Players Ever
For those of you who still believe college football is played on anything approaching a level playing field, allow me to introduce you to the 2017 Alabama Crimson Tide recruiting class.
Now four years removed from what could very well be considered the greatest class ever, that group has produced four first round NFL Draft picks in each of the last two years, the 2020 Heisman Trophy winner and the quarterback who would have won that same award if he wasn't throwing to the guy who did. And all that doesn't even count Dylan Moses, who almost certainly would have been a first round if it weren't for a torn ACL and meniscus in back-to-back seasons — and he could still end up being one of the biggest steals of this NFL Draft.
But stuff like this is why I can't even really get upset about losing to Alabama. What is any team outside of Clemson and Ohio State supposed to do? You're playing in an NFL Draft showcase, except it's just for the other team. Twenty-one of the players in that 2017 class were ranked in the top 300 nationally. These numbers are not normal.
And the recruiting truthers who always throw out stats about how many three-stars and below make the Pro Bowl and all that nonsense have always been wrong, but when you see classes like this and account for the fact that four- and five-stars make up 10 percent of each recruiting class, yet accounted for 17 of last night's 32 first round picks, it shows how predictive these rankings truly are.
Here's the worst part of this whole deal. The average player ranking of that 2017 Alabama class was a 0.9376. Eight first rounders. The average ranking of the Tide's 2021 class? 0.9500.
The pain will not end anytime soon.
