College Football

National Signing Day: Texas A&M chasing Georgia, Bama

Updated Dec. 13, 2022 10:31 a.m. ET

By RJ Young
FOX Sports College Football Writer

Texas A&M wants to be third.

The third program in the College Football Playoff era to finish a recruiting cycle at No. 1 and eventually win a national title, that is.

Only Alabama and Georgia have pulled off that trick. And only Nick Saban’s Alabama and Kirby Smart’s UGA have finished No. 1 in recruiting in the previous 11 years.

In fact, before Wednesday, Urban Meyer’s 2010 Florida was the only other program to finish No. 1 in recruiting since we began ranking classes in 1998. Until last year, that Florida class held the highest score in history.

Then, 2021 Alabama took the title, and now, 2022 Texas A&M holds it.

With five-star edge Shemar Stewart joining the Aggies' 2022 recruiting class, Jimbo Fisher has signed six of the top 19 players in the country and earned a score of 328.59. During the early signing period, A&M also added defensive tackle Walter Nolen, the highest-ranked recruit in school history.

Keeping his word, Fisher is chasing down Saban and Smart.

A&M now looks primed to challenge for its first SEC title and first conference title since 1998. But the Aggies have never wanted to just sit atop the best league in the sport.

Ampersand U wants to win the whole doggone thing. This assault on the 2022 cycle is the Aggies' latest declaration and their most believable since they upset national title runner-up Alabama with a backup quarterback, Zach Calzada, who has since transferred. Fisher signed former LSU quarterback Max Johnson out of the portal.

The Aggies finished No. 8 in the 2021 rankings, No. 6 in 2020 and No. 4 in 2019. Now they'll draw strength from the knowledge that both teams to finish No. 1 in the recruiting rankings in the CFP era have won a national title.

A&M has more than enough talent to win its first championship since 1939. But many do not believe Fisher put together the best class in history purely by pitching a fully funded educational opportunity.

Some have posited that A&M made central to its pitch Name, Image and Likeness opportunities in and about College Station totaling as much as $30 million. Fisher refuted this in a rant in which he called coaches, administrators and even message board posters "clowns."

"This is garbage," he said. "And it pisses me off. It comes from a site called BroBible from a guy called Sliced Bread. And everybody runs with it. So it’s written on the Internet, so it’s gospel. How irresponsible is that? And then to have coaches in our league and across this league to say it? Clown acts."

Fueling the discussion is the self-proclaimed "Portal King," Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin.

"We don’t have the funding resources as some schools with the NIL deals," Kiffin said. "It’s like dealing with salary caps.

"I joked I didn’t know if Texas A&M incurred a luxury tax with how much they paid for their signing class."

Added Kiffin: "Somehow, they’re going to have to control NIL. You’ve got these salary caps, [schools] giving players millions to sign before they play and other places not able to do that. What would the NFL look like if two or three teams could pay 10 times more in salary cap?"

The answer is it would look like Major League Baseball has for 50 years.

OTHER SIGNING DAY TAKEAWAYS

The next Clemson? It might never happen again

In 2016, the year Clemson won its first national title under Dabo Swinney, the Tigers finished No. 11 in the Composite. The previous year, 2015, the Tigers finished No. 9. In 2014, they finished No. 16. Finally, the 2013 class — the senior class of the 2016 national champion Tigers — ranked No. 15.

There's precedent for four consecutive classes ranked outside the top 10 — or, in this case, the top five — overachieving and winning a national title. However, Clemson is the only program to accomplish that feat in the CFP era.

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To underscore how unlikely it is for a team to win the national championship without recruiting a top-10 class for four years, it would be like the Tennessee Volunteers winning the title next season after putting together classes ranked No. 13 in 2019, No. 11 in 2020, No. 22 in 2021 and No. 15 in 2022.

But in today's sport, the transfer portal grows each day. Players enter the portal, and coaches retrieve them. And players are more likely than ever to play at more than one school.

Some transfers can immediately change our perception of a program from decent to good, from dark horse title contender to betting favorite.

USC, Ole Miss and Texas are 2022 examples of this phenomenon in action.

Zero to hero via ‘Portal Kombat’

Ole Miss added former USC quarterback Jaxson Dart and tight end Michael Trigg, as well as former Texas Christian running back Zach Evans.

Texas added former No. 1 overall recruit and Ohio State quarterback Quinn Ewers, former Alabama tight end Jahleel Billingsley and former Wyoming receiver Isaiah Neyor from the portal en route to signing the No. 4 class in this cycle.

USC signed 14 players on National Signing Day, including an astounding 13 transfers, which made this Trojan transfer class No. 1 in the cycle, thanks in no small part to the addition of Caleb Williams on Tuesday.

The portal allows coaches to make over their rosters each spring and immediately become national title contenders. With Williams’ commitment to USC, the Trojans became +3500 national title favorites after being +8000 on Monday, according to FOX Bet.

Keep in mind, betting odds do not reflect who a bookmaker believes will win as much as they reflect what the public believes is likely to happen. The public believes USC ought to be good, even as the Trojans are still in the middle of a rebuild.

Lincoln Riley wants transfer portal regulation

Even after putting together a remarkable transfer class, the USC coach wants portal regulation.

"It's changed the way college football operates," Riley told ESPN. "At some point, we’ll have to put in some guardrails to ensure when it can happen, when it can’t happen, so players and staffs are a little bit more on the same page. Right now, it’s so open-ended that I think it is difficult for players, difficult for coaches building rosters … trying to project for the future.

"The ill effects of that, when you start looking down at the high school athlete and how many of these scholarships are actually going to players in high school, is concerning. So I think so much has changed.

"There’s a lot of really good, smart people in college football that care about the sport. I think a lot of those people need to get together as we have a chance to assess all that’s happened, and I think we can put together a plan that gives everybody the flexibility that they want but also maintains kind of the integrity of building a roster and being able to use all the different channels to do that in a positive way."

However, there is little appetite at the NCAA to limit movement among players, considering the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and opinions in Alston v. NCAA, which decided there was no reasonable difference between college and professional sports in limiting educational benefits college athletes could receive.

In writing for the Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch contended that the NCAA "seeks immunity from the normal operation of the antitrust laws" and saw no reason to grant that immunity for the sake of amateurism.

NCAA officials are right to fear a challenge to Gorsuch’s opinion that might lead to not just more agency for players but also a collective bargaining agreement among NCAA athletes that recognizes them as a labor union entitled to equal pay.

But until a solution is reached that involves fair compensation for players, while coaches such as Riley earn annual eight-figure sums for coaching football, expect the transfer portal to maintain its current status quo.

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RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The No. 1 Ranked Show with RJ Young." Follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Young, and subscribe to "The RJ Young Show" on YouTube. He is not on a StepMill.