Charting Rutgers Recruiting: Where we stand today

The quiet period in football recruiting begins May 31.  After all, even the NCAA realizes that athletes are busy getting ready for summer break, graduations, and vacations.

Doesn't mean we have to stop thinking about recruiting.  So where are we now?

Thus far, Chris Ash has made some very positive moves and has a number of top tier verbal commitments.  Our Scott Logan pointed out that Rutgers has already moved up in national rankings, well ahead of what it was doing the last two recruiting cycles.

And - because I like playing with charts - we're going to chart the progress til next February when the fax machines start humming in the Hale Center.

Gerry DiNardo

BTN's DiNardo does his regular tweets about where each Big Ten squad sits in the recruiting wars.  His most recent report came out on Monday.

B1G 2017 Recruiting Update #Rutgers Ranked 32 Nationally by Scout, 25 by 247,
37 by Rivals with ave. star rating of 2.55 and 10 Commits

— Gerry DiNardo (@gerrydinardo) May 23, 2016

B1G 2017 Recruiting Update East average ranking 24 with an average star rating of 3.20 West average ranking 39 with a star rating of 2.98

— Gerry DiNardo (@gerrydinardo) May 23, 2016

The Beast is the East

And that East Division is a tough nut to crack.

The difference between the East Division's have-iest of haves and the not-iest of have nots is stupefying. Seriously, there are like four entire conferences between the Buckeyes and the Hoosiers.  Even the difference between Rutgers and the not-iest of have nots is shocking.  And Indiana kept Kevin Wilson for that?

What's interesting and hopeful for Rutgers, though, are the gaps between the rest of the East.  Based on average rankings, Rutgers is only a handful of places behind one of last year's CFP teams.  The Knights are closer to MSU than Sparty is to Penn State. Or than Penn State is to Maryland.  All in all, it's a pretty tight bunching of schools once you get past Ohio State and Michigan.

One additional commitment over the last two weeks didn't move the needle much for Rutgers within the Big Ten. It did, though make a difference on the national stage.

We'll chart Rutgers' progress monthly through December, then weekly up through National Letter of Intent signing on February 1, 2017.

P5 Programs Behind Rutgers

For the record, these are the next five schools in each service's rankings after the Knights.

We'll be back in mid-June to see where we stand then.