Early National Signing Day is here, which means reactions to and rankings of each school’s incoming class will immediately follow.

This is an inexact science, of course, and always will be. But these ratings do tend to have some degree of accuracy in projecting overall program strength.

Teams that reach the College Football Playoff stack together top-15 signing classes. There have been exceptions — Michigan State in 2014, Washington in 2015, Cincinnati this year — but that’s pretty much the rule.

However, the science of rating recruiting classes is about to get decidedly more inexact. Indeed, the revolution is already underway.

How the transfer portal is changing the calculus

In February, Mel Tucker and Michigan State pulled in what appeared to be a meager recruiting haul. The Spartans, according to 247Sports’ composite rankings, signed a class that ranked 10th in the Big Ten and 46th in the country.

Combined with a 2-5 record in his first season, Tucker did not appear to be setting the world aflame.

Less than a year later, Tucker can now afford to set large stacks of bills aflame. The Spartans are ranked 10th in the CFP and headed to the Peach Bowl. Tucker has a new 10-year contract worth $95 million. And a lot of it is thanks to that supposed 46th-ranked recruiting class.

That’s because 14 members of that class were transfers able to hit the ground running. And since transfers are leaving their previous programs for a multitude of reasons, it can be impossible to project the impact they’ll make upon arrival.

Maybe they were stuck behind a more talented player on the depth chart. That was why Jameson Williams left Ohio State for Alabama, where he became an overnight star and the SEC’s best receiver. Or perhaps they fit better in a different coaching scheme. But chances are most transfers don’t reach their full potential with the program they are leaving, or there would be no need to go anywhere. Former LSU national champion QB Joe Burrow is the ultimate impact transfer success story, but there are countless others.

Take running back Kenneth Walker III, who rated as a 3-star transfer from Wake Forest. He ended up being the best running back in the country, winning the Doak Walker Award and finishing 6th in Heisman voting. That’s clearly a 5-star impact, but one that is impossible to predict for a guy who spent 2 seasons as Wake’s No. 2 running back.

Now that Tucker has something cooking, the Spartans will be more reliant on high school signees this year. But there are still potential high-impact transfers like linebackers Jacoby Windmon (UNLV) and Aaron Brule (Mississippi State) in the class. Both are considered 3-star additions based on their collegiate production. But Tucker is presumably adding them with the idea they’ll outperform those ratings under his tutelage.

A chance to play catch-up

As action in the transfer portal burgeons — more than 2,500 FBS and FCS players entered their names last offseason — programs that usually don’t have much of a chance on National Signing Day have a chance to play catch-up.

As we see in the annual makeup of the CFP, top high school talent generally gravitates toward the same programs. Alabama. Georgia. Ohio State. Clemson. Oklahoma. LSU. And so on.

It certainly doesn’t head to South Carolina. The Gamecocks had Top 20 classes under Steve Spurrier, but the pickings have been slimmer since his retirement. Last year South Carolina was dead-last in the SEC and all the way down to 79th nationally.

This week, Shane Beamer added a couple of elite transfers South Carolina would have had no chance of getting out of high school unless they were in-state recruits — quarterback Spencer Rattler — a 5-star recruit and No. 1 QB in the 2019 class — and tight end Austin Stogner. Both came from Oklahoma, where Beamer was an assistant before being hired at South Carolina last year.

This type of movement figures to become more typical — players following coaches who were instrumental in their original signing. Another such example took place when former Indiana quarterback Michael Penix Jr. committed to Washington on Tuesday. Penix wants to play for former Hoosiers offensive coordinator Kalen DeBoer, who is now Washington’s head coach.

In 2017, the NCAA passed rules prohibiting schools from signing players from a high school program for 2 years if a coach from that high school is hired. No such prohibition exists when coaches come from other college programs, though.

Thus, it’s much easier to leverage personal relationships through the transfer portal. And that’s not going to stop.

The new Signing Day question

Fans used to focus on 3 primary questions with each incoming signing class.

  1. What are we ranked?
  2. Which of these players will make an immediate impact on the roster, and who will redshirt?
  3. How many games will this signing class end up winning before everyone’s gone in 4-5 years?

Now those questions are joined, and perhaps superseded, by a fourth.

How many of these guys will actually finish their college careers wearing the same uniform?

The answer to that one places a completely different perspective on signing day and how much impact each signing class will actually have.