The Missouri Tigers have been the class of the SEC East over the last two seasons.

Despite constantly being regards as the inferior team in comparison to other divisional rivals like Georgia, South Carolina or even Florida, Missouri has emerged as the SEC East’s representative in the SEC Championship in two of its three seasons in the Tigers’ new conference.

However, on the recruiting trail the Tigers have yet to make up the large discrepancy in success between themselves and other SEC East teams.

Missouri has still done an outstanding job with its player development as head coach Gary Pinkel continues to develop numerous two or three-star recruits into significant contributors for his team. But the Tigers constantly find themselves near the bottom of the SEC East in regard to recruiting rankings, largely because of name recognition and the Tigers’ short history within the conference.

As of right now, the SEC East has three teams in the top 12 recruiting classes according to 247sports — Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina. Kentucky is also ahead of Missouri in the rankings with the Wildcats coming at No. 29 and Missouri with the 35th ranked recruiting class. One has to imagine the Florida Gators, currently ranked 76th, will also jump back up with a late recruiting push by Jim McElwain and his new coaching staff.

At some point, however, the Tigers’ success in the SEC will begin to pay dividends on the recruiting trail and the 2015 recruiting cycle could be the first tangible sign of Missouri’s development as a recruiting threat to its SEC East brethren.

In their past five recruiting classes, Missouri has signed just one five-star recruit — wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham — and that didn’t turn out great in the end.

This year’s recruiting class brings optimism that Missouri could be in position to sign more highly-regard recruits in the future.

Currently, Missouri is in play for five-star defensive end and top-five overall recruit Terry Beckner Jr. Unlike with Green-Beckham’s recruitment in 2011, the Tigers are fending off some of the country’s top football programs for Beckner.

In Green-Beckham’s recruitment, although teams like Alabama and Texas made pushes for the No. 1 wide receiver, it was largely expected that he would stay close to home, meaning Missouri would have to beat out Arkansas or Oklahoma.

Now, Missouri is flexing its muscles against top-tier programs. As of now, Beckner’s finalists are Missouri, Ohio State, Florida State, Auburn and LSU. Two of those schools are in the inaugural CFP.

Despite the strong competition, experts project Missouri to win over Beckner and for him to become a Tiger by the end of his recruitment, which would be quite an accomplishment for Pinkel and his staff. The impact on Missouri’s perception would be huge for the Tigers as Beckner’s recruitment would be proof that the Tigers can compete with the big boys of college football recruiting, something I don’t think could have been said several years ago.

Missouri recently secured the commitment of four-star athlete Marquise Doherty, another big recruiting victory in 2015 for the Tigers not only because of his talent but because Missouri beat out another CFP team — Oregon — in his recruitment.

And I think that’s where we’ll start seeing the biggest shift in Missouri’s recruitment.

Will Gary Pinkel start pulling in five-stars like Mark Richt? No. Missouri simply doesn’t have the tradition of teams like Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina or Florida to bring in the same number of top prospects.

But the Tigers’ recent success is creating momentum for Pinkel and his staff and that’s evident in the 2015 recruiting cycle as Missouri begins to seriously compete with top programs for a few highly-regard recruits like Beckner.

It’s a small, but important step for Pinkel as he continues to build Missouri’s brand among many prestigious teams within his own conference and division.