FCS Impact Freshmen - Top 20 Teams

[SU DOG]

Strictly a project of mine for a boring Sunday afternoon. Totally subjective and derived from often skewed star ratings. I tried to average the recruiting services and come up with an arbitrary 40 point scale. This does NOT include any transfers at all. Before anyone goes ballistic, this is totally unofficial, and probably totally off-base. Some players probably didn't even show up after their commitment, and I can't check that many rosters(although I did check a few). It was an interesting project, however. Here is my list for the teams with the most immediate impact freshmen by my calculations. Please blame the services and others' lists are VERY welcomed.

1. Nova - 40
2. SFA - 38
3. TX State - 32
4. GSU - 30
5. Weber State - 28
6. Harvard - 27
7. SCSU - 26
8. JSU - 24
9. U Mass - 21
10. NIU - 20
11. Penn - 18
12. ODU - 16
13. Richmond - 14
14. UNH - 13
15. EWU - 11
16. Delaware - 9
17. W & M - 8
18. SIU - 7
19. UCA - 6
20. UC Davis - 5

[R3TRO]

IIRC, Nova lost a few of those recruits when they didn't go to the Big East. I could be completely wrong with that, but I thought I read that somewhere.

[lsu2469]

Who exactly did NOVA lose because they are not going to the Big East yet? The only commit lost was a player that needed to go to prep school for a year and then plans to attend NOVA.

[R3TRO]

I think I may have just misinterpreted a quote from an article.

[appfan2008]

No ASU? :(

[TwoFeathers]

How about Harvard at #6???

[SU DOG]

Some of this was very surprising to me. I did not do a simple Rivals star count. I averaged several sources. For example, Harvard actually has a total of 23 stars compared to Nova's 20, but Nova has four 3-star Rivals LOIs and Harvard has 3. App State, on the other hand has only one 3-star, and a total of seven.

Again, some players rated 3-stars on one service will often be a 1-star on others, so any list of this sort is by definition very subjective and questionable. Another variable is the fact that coaches recruit to their needs. I very seriously doubt that the crafty Jerry Moore would trade his freshmen for anybody's.

[Anovafan]

Nova definitely has a strong class coming in. I did a similar comparison of rivals star ratings and thought Nova was very near the top as well. Based on summer strength and conditioning reports, this class is as good as the senior class that just graduated. I hope that translates into some stellar on the field performances because Nova will need it this fall to be competitive in the CAA.

[chattownmocs]

Based on offer lists alone, Chattanooga, and App State all certainly finished in the top 20.