2026 HS/JC Football Recruiting

[Bothrops]

We are doing the only thing we can do in football recruiting right now, but you can read between the lines. We are already priced out of the market for in-state SEC talent, with a few exceptions. It boils down to this - if we dont win a bare minimum of 5 games this season with one being the last game, nothing tranfers to 2026. The roster jumps, and Lebby will be coaching for his job with a more limited roster. As long as any healthy program is offering what were paying or even less in many cases we will have to fill the roster with more and more G5 guys, which will bury this place regardless of who's coach. We have to win games this year in order to avoid a trainwreck in 2026, due to loss of assets.

Furthermore, he portal isn't going save us unless the university along with additional NIL is prepared to dump $20-30 million for just football player allocation. Signing and holding on to the right guys to turn the ship.

Meanwhile, this is a real life cartoon.

[maroonmania]

We are doing the only thing we can do in football recruiting right now, but you can read between the lines. We are already priced out of the market for in-state SEC talent, with a few exceptions. It boils down to this - if we dont win a bare minimum of 5 games this season with one being the last game, nothing tranfers to 2026. The roster jumps, and Lebby will be coaching for his job with a more limited roster. As long as any healthy program is offering what were paying or even less in many cases we will have to fill the roster with more and more G5 guys, which will bury this place regardless of who's coach. We have to win games this year in order to avoid a trainwreck in 2026, due to loss of assets.

Furthermore, he portal isn't going save us unless the university along with additional NIL is prepared to dump $20-30 million for just football player allocation. Signing and holding on to the right guys to turn the ship.

Meanwhile, this is a real life cartoon.

Does the house settlement deal give us any hope? From my understanding there will be a cap on total athletic payouts from the school to use across all sports and then each individual NIL deal beyond that has to get approved by a committee of some sort to be a true NIL deal that is reasonable market value (and not just pure pay for play). Not great but would seem to be way better than the total free for all we have now.

[Goldendawg]

Well, after our big recruiting weekend, we got 4 commits yesterday, 3 big OL(Hard to evaluate in HS) and a LB/Edge who has not been rated to date. Nationally, this caused the team rating to drop from 41 to 45, (24/7). We still do not have a single 4 star. The offer sheets of most of our 14 commits are very lacking with few having SEC offers except for a couple with OM and KY offers. This is looking like we are taking diamonds in the rough that we hope to develop in this portal/NIL $ driven FB world. But, how do you attract big names after 2-10 and 0-8 with an OTJ training HC and DC, again? Color me still concerned about recruiting this class.

[Goldendawg]

You are dead on with this. We don't really act like we really want to win in football. The ONLY coordinator/assistant we've ever hired as a HC that has worked out was Mullen, and that was just dumb luck. Felker, Croom, Morehead, and Arnett were all in over their heads and the jury is out on Lebby. Sherrill and Leach both won, even here at Lil old MSU. State, playing in the grinder that is the SEC, is a tough place to learn how to be a D1 head coach.

Showing my age, but Bob Tyler was very successful as a former Asst. who became a HC for us before the trumped up probation debacle. We should add all those 18 forfeits back to our overall and SEC records now.

[Political Hack]

Does the house settlement deal give us any hope? From my understanding there will be a cap on total athletic payouts from the school to use across all sports and then each individual NIL deal beyond that has to get approved by a committee of some sort to be a true NIL deal that is reasonable market value (and not just pure pay for play). Not great but would seem to be way better than the total free for all we have now.

Yes. But there will be NIL deals on top of the school payouts. Teams with larger markets will outpace us still, but not by as much as they have historically.

[Goldendawg]

Bumping my own thread as interest in football seems to have fallen off a cliff, probably with very good reason. Well, we now have 23 commits which gets us "up" to #30 on 24/7 rating. We now have that one elusive 4 star. Three of the last seven commits have very good offer sheets and the other four have yet to be rated, both instate and out of state players. The last four's offer sheets are pitiful at this time. Better hope their ratings come in as a surprise as one player is listed at #51 in the state of MS. Not easy recruiting to a program with an unknown OTJ training staff that just went 2-10, 0-8, with the NIL $ issues to boot. Hope my concern is premature and they are identifying some "diamonds in the rough" if that concept can still build a winning team in today's NIL/Portal mess.

[R2Dawg]

Bumping my own thread as interest in football seems to have fallen off a cliff, probably with very good reason. Well, we now have 23 commits which gets us "up" to #30 on 24/7 rating. We now have that one elusive 4 star. Three of the last seven commits have very good offer sheets and the other four have yet to be rated, both instate and out of state players. The last four's offer sheets are pitiful at this time. Better hope their ratings come in as a surprise as one player is listed at #51 in the state of MS. Not easy recruiting to a program with an unknown OTJ training staff that just went 2-10, 0-8, with the NIL $ issues to boot. Hope my concern is premature and they are identifying some "diamonds in the rough" if that concept can still build a winning team in today's NIL/Portal mess.

On one hand (gloom and doom trend), yeah we can't compete, etc.

However, on the other consider these points.
1. We have never gotten top recruits overall in big bunches to be to half of SEC. Just never happened. Yet we still competed with these little Miss kids that just had a lot in them to compete at a high level.

2. We are still a little school in big pond (SEC). We are in the best football conf period. That will attract some talent even in NIL era from other places - we got a 5 star QB from FSU - did that make anyone feel better?

3. Player evaluations have always been bad and NIL didn't change that. Transfer portal corrects for that and that makes it harder for us but we can still get some good talent by the misses. Yall know our storied history of getting no talent players and then they are All Americans, All SEC, etc. That will still happen, we must manage the transfer portal. Also we must get the talented kids that want to be here - Kamario Taylor, etc. (Josh Hubbard in basketball) to win at MSU.

Personally I'm good with winning 6-8 games a year with an occasional 9 win year and I'm ready to get back to that. 2-3 win years I am not OK with. OM has broke the bank and they still got nothing to show for it.

[Goldendawg]

On one hand (gloom and doom trend), yeah we can't compete, etc.

However, on the other consider these points.
1. We have never gotten top recruits overall in big bunches to be to half of SEC. Just never happened. Yet we still competed with these little Miss kids that just had a lot in them to compete at a high level.

2. We are still a little school in big pond (SEC). We are in the best football conf period. That will attract some talent even in NIL era from other places - we got a 5 star QB from FSU - did that make anyone feel better?

3. Player evaluations have always been bad and NIL didn't change that. Transfer portal corrects for that and that makes it harder for us but we can still get some good talent by the misses. Yall know our storied history of getting no talent players and then they are All Americans, All SEC, etc. That will still happen, we must manage the transfer portal. Also we must get the talented kids that want to be here - Kamario Taylor, etc. (Josh Hubbard in basketball) to win at MSU.

Personally I'm good with winning 6-8 games a year with an occasional 9 win year and I'm ready to get back to that. 2-3 win years I am not OK with. OM has broke the bank and they still got nothing to show for it.

I'm with you 100% on all these points. And heck, maybe even another SEC title game if they continue to have them in my lifetime. People forget we were #1 in the nation, but it seems like a life time ago. Together we can do this! Hail State!

[Dawgology]

Is HS recruiting even a thing anymore? Our best bet is to just hit the portal every season for 75% of our roster. If we sign any great players from HS we better play them day one because they will be goooooonnnneeee in a season or two. College football (nationwide) is a shitshow.

[Goldendawg]

Update: Dalton Toothman from Van Cleave in the boat, .87, 6'5", 295 OL with a great offer sheet with many SEC offers. Plans to enroll in December. Moves us up to #32 ranking with 23 commits with only 16 having their 24/7 composite. Will be very interesting to see their individual ratings and how it improves national rating of class to date. Still only 1 four star ,but who knows, seems to be a lot of quantity (23), but what about quality? Time will tell and a long way to December. Free info on all 2026 classes on 24/7(Genes Page). Clink on top of page FB Rec, then in drop down box Team Ranking, then clink on MSU for individual info on each player. Hail State!

[gtowndawg]

Personally I'm good with winning 6-8 games a year with an occasional 9 win year and I'm ready to get back to that. 2-3 win years I am not OK with. OM has broke the bank and they still got nothing to show for it.

For the life of me I don't understand why people act like that's not worth spending money for. 6-8 wins a year has always been good years for us. 8 wins is a GREAT year for us historically. But now all of the sudden it's not worth messing with? We are committing suicide athletically and nobody seems to care (as long as we can build a few more condos at the baseball stadium). We're just slow dancing in a burning room and people just shrug their shoulders..."oh well."

[DawgFromOxford]

Update: Dalton Toothman from Van Cleave in the boat, .87, 6'5", 295 OL with a great offer sheet with many SEC offers. Plans to enroll in December. Moves us up to #32 ranking with 23 commits with only 16 having their 24/7 composite. Will be very interesting to see their individual ratings and how it improves national rating of class to date. Still only 1 four star ,but who knows, seems to be a lot of quantity (23), but what about quality? Time will tell and a long way to December. Free info on all 2026 classes on 24/7(Genes Page). Clink on top of page FB Rec, then in drop down box Team Ranking, then clink on MSU for individual info on each player. Hail State!

I'm ok with quantity from high school. You figure most will transfer out anyways, so take in a bunch and try to find a few studs to keep. Quality comes from the portal.

[StarkVegasSteve]

For the life of me I don't understand why people act like that's not worth spending money for. 6-8 wins a year has always been good years for us. 8 wins is a GREAT year for us historically. But now all of the sudden it's not worth messing with? We are committing suicide athletically and nobody seems to care (as long as we can build a few more condos at the baseball stadium). We're just slow dancing in a burning room and people just shrug their shoulders..."oh well."

Because people either:

1. Don't believe that conference realignment will actually ever happen

2. They think baseball matters in terms of keeping you in a conference.....it doesn't.

3. They truly just don't care and would rather get drunk in the The Baseball Grove than be good at anything. I.E. Ole Miss' attitude up until Keith Carter.

[AROB44]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to StarkVegasSteve again.

[Goldendawg]

Positive update for today at least. All 23 of our commits have now received their composite ranking and our class is now ranked number 23 in the nation. This includes one 4 star with a composite of .8908, one player ranked 88, seven ranked 87, seven ranked 86, seven ranked 85. I'm sure as other schools fill their classes, we will not stay at 23 unless some of these players hopefully blow up during their senior season. If so, I hope we can hold onto them. This is a MSU public recruiting announcement for my 12 fellow elitedawgs who still care about football on this site.***

[R2Dawg]

Positive update for today at least. All 23 of our commits have now received their composite ranking and our class is now ranked number 23 in the nation. This includes one 4 star with a composite of .8908, one player ranked 88, seven ranked 87, seven ranked 86, seven ranked 85. I'm sure as other schools fill their classes, we will not stay at 23 unless some of these players hopefully blow up during their senior season. If so, I hope we can hold onto them. This is a MSU public recruiting announcement for my 12 fellow elitedawgs who still care about football on this site.***

Must be the older Dawgs because there have been worse droughts than what we are in now. One in 70s, 80s, 2000s are 3 worse loosing streaks than now but it does not feel great. We have always battled back. History says we bounce back from the lull we are in and come out swinging pretty soon.

Now if we have 2 more losing seasons in a row then I may want to tap out then.

[Political Hack]

Build it like Army did last year or like the big boys build it every year? Personally, i think if we try to build our teams the same way the other SEC teams do, we'll never catch them again. If we take developmental guys that are interested in being in Starkville for four years, I think that works out better for us over time than trying to buy a Ferrari each and every year.

So as dumb as this sounds, a team full of 3-stars may be better than chasing the 5-star's and one year wonders.

[CaptainObvious]

Are academics still a thing with scholarships?

Reason I ask is it amazes me that 4 of the State's best high school football programs are within 40 miles of Starkville and we cannot build any momentum with signees from these schools. Starkville, West Point and Louisville combined have more State Championships than any other 10 schools combined. Noxubee County has become a serious Class 4 contender. Choctaw County(formerly Weir and Ackerman) also have great history as HS football powers. Tupelo should be evenly split between Ole Miss and State as should Grenada. Either we didn't offer the kid from Choctaw County enough money and Miss MSU as a girlfriend, or these guys just DONT WANT to play at State for any reason.

[DownwardDawg]

Build it like Army did last year or like the big boys build it every year? Personally, i think if we try to build our teams the same way the other SEC teams do, we'll never catch them again. If we take developmental guys that are interested in being in Starkville for four years, I think that works out better for us over time than trying to buy a Ferrari each and every year.

So as dumb as this sounds, a team full of 3-stars may be better than chasing the 5-star's and one year wonders.

It doesn't sound dumb at all. It's spot on. We have to have the right coach running the right system at State.

[Todd4State]

Build it like Army did last year or like the big boys build it every year? Personally, i think if we try to build our teams the same way the other SEC teams do, we'll never catch them again. If we take developmental guys that are interested in being in Starkville for four years, I think that works out better for us over time than trying to buy a Ferrari each and every year.

So as dumb as this sounds, a team full of 3-stars may be better than chasing the 5-star's and one year wonders.

I agree that because we are Mississippi State and not Alabama we have to do something differently than everyone else. That's a big reason why I liked Leach. And Emory Bellard. Even Jackie- we had Joe Lee Dunn which had an unusual defense for that time which helped level the playing field for us.

And to your point I remember when Dan was here everyone praised him for taking 3 stars and developing them. And that worked too. How is what Lebby did this past week any different other than yes we do need to see if he can develop these players. But it's the same basic formula. Get guys that have good size and are raw and then develop them.

Of course as you and I both know we have to use the portal some to supplement but that's why this could actually work out even better because with Dan we often times had major holes at position groups and if the portal had been a thing back in the day I think Dan could have potentially done even better because we could have potentially filled those holes better.