Ask Farrell: Which SEC school has been best with 2021 class
RELATED: SEC team rankings
CLASS OF 2021 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team | State
CLASS OF 2022: Top 100
FACT OR FICTION: Clemson just landed the next Christian McCaffrey
Something interesting is going on across the SEC during this coronavirus travel ban and it’s something that usually does not happen to the conference.
While many top recruits have used April to make commitments, SEC teams have largely been on the sidelines and not participating as much as teams in other conferences.
Patience has been the keyword in the SEC as elite teams keep their powder dry during this uncertainty. It’s something we haven’t seen much in recent years as SEC teams usually load up in a big way and then add top five- and four-star prospects late to round out the class.
In this recruiting cycle, that has not been the case.
Tennessee had an incredibly busy April and first few days of May, landing nine commitments so far with four-stars Terrence Lewis, Dylan Brooks, Cody Brown and others leading the way. The Volunteers are second in the overall team recruiting rankings and they have more pledges than any team in the country.
While Tennessee has been doing it with quality and quantity, others have been focused only on the former this early in the recruiting cycle and especially with this much uncertainty about what the future holds.
LSU has added four commitments during this timeframe, all four-stars, and three of them coming from the state of Texas where the Tigers continue to raid top talent. Georgia has landed three pledges in April and early May and all of them were four-stars as well.
Most every other team in the SEC has added commitments this last month or so but the numbers have been muted. Only Florida, currently ranked second in the SEC team rankings, have not had a commit during this timeframe.
These are unique times but certain programs have definitely navigated through April and early May with a lot of success on the recruiting trail.
FARRELL'S TAKE
We ask Rivals National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell to pick just one team in the SEC which he thinks has done the best job over the last month or so.
"Tennessee has done the best job. We expect LSU, Georgia and others to land four-stars based on their home-state advantages and recent success, but Jeremy Pruitt and his staff are selling a vision and that’s much harder to do. So landing key players like Lewis from Florida, Kamar Wilcoxson from Georgia and Brooks from Alabama is especially impressive to me. They have been the talk of the recruiting world the last couple of weeks.”