By the Numbers, BYU's 2024 Class is the Best of Sitake Era

There's a lot to like about BYU's 2024 recruiting class

Author:
Casey Lundquist
Publish date:
Feb 8, 2024 10:49 AM EST

On Wednesday, BYU put a bow on the 2024 class with national signing day. The Cougars signed two high school teammates in Sefo Akuila and Naki Tuakoi. Meanwhile, BYU received commitments from multiple preferred walk-ons. Today, let's look at the data behind the 2024 class and compare it to prior classes under Kalani Sitake.

Author note: These numbers exclude transfers, kickers, and preferred walk-ons for comparability

Recruiting Ranking

As of early Wednesday evening, BYU's recruiting class is ranked no. 44 in the country. A class in the 40's won't make national headlines, but it is BYU's highest-ranked class since 2016.

BYU's class ranked 5th out of 16 teams in the new-look Big 12.

Texas Tech (24th nationally)
TCU (34th)
UCF (35th)
Kansas (43rd)
BYU (44th)
WVU (47th)
Arizona State (49th)
Cincinnati (50th)
Iowa State (53rd)
Oklahoma State (56th)
Kansas State (57th)
Utah (60th)
Houston (61st)
Baylor (67th)
Arizona (82nd)
Colorado (117th)

BYU's high school signing class will need to inside the top 50 annually to compete for championships in the Big 12. This is the first step in the right direction. If BYU is able to keep this staff together, the recruiting will continue to get better and better.

Average Composite Rating

247Sports does a composite rating for each player. The composite rating is an equally-weighted average rating between the three recruiting services: 247Sports, Rivals, and ESPN. From an average rating perspective, this is Kalani Sitake's best recruiting class ever and it's the best since average for BYU since star ratings were invented.

In the span of four years, BYU's average signee has improved from a low three-star recruit to a mid to upper three-star recruit. For those that don't follow recruiting closely, that might not mean much. But that's a material improvement and, in the opinion of this author, is more meaningful than recruiting rankings. Most importantly, this statistic indicates that BYU fans will start to see more, better players suiting up for the Cougars in the coming years.

Competing Offers

One of my favorite ways to grade a BYU recruiting class is looking at the percentage of commits that have competing offers to play at other FBS schools. It's not a perfect measure, but it tells an interesting story, especially this year. First let's look at the percentage of 2023 commits that turned down P5 schools to play for BYU.

From this perspective, BYU's 2024 class is the best in the Sitake era by a wide margin. 21 out of 25 signees held competing Power Five offers. Last year, we said BYU would need to be around 70%-75% to compete for championships. BYU surpassed that standard this year - even with a large class.

Next, let's look at the percentage of 2024 signees that held a competing FBS offer when they signed with BYU.

This is the yet another metric that points to the 2024 class being the best. BYU took on more head-to-head recruiting battles in this class and won. That's an important ingredient to building a Power Five program with depth. The only signees without competing FBS offers were quarterback Enoch Watson and wide receiver Jett Nelson.

The goal for the 2025 class will be to continue to build on the recruiting momentum that BYU has established over the last four or five months. If BYU's new offensive staff can start to recruit at the same level that the defensive staff has recruited over the last few months, BYU's recruiting classes will start to crack the top 40 on an annual basis.

Facebook - @CougsDaily

Twitter - @Cougs_Daily and Casey Lundquist at @casey_lundquist

Instagram - @cougs_daily