2026 HS/JC Football Recruiting

[StarkVegasSteve]

Update or maybe more accurately a "Downdate". We have now dropped to a national ranking of #37 and still have only 1 borderline 4 star and 24 three stars, (many with very questionable offer sheets). There are approximately 18 name programs that are behind us but have a higher per player ranking and many spots to fill that will likely pass us. Long way until December and a genespage article mentioned some of these players may be processed for other programs' processed players before signing day in this NIL madness. We better hope some of the guys blow up their Senior year and we can keep them also. If not, this class could end up in the high 40's or low 50's, probably the worse class in my long State life.

Out of those 24 three stars I would expect at least 5-6 to get processed.

[maroonmania]

Update or maybe more accurately a "Downdate". We have now dropped to a national ranking of #37 and still have only 1 borderline 4 star and 24 three stars, (many with very questionable offer sheets). There are approximately 18 name programs that are behind us but have a higher per player ranking and many spots to fill that will likely pass us. Long way until December and a genespage article mentioned some of these players may be processed for other programs' processed players before signing day in this NIL madness. We better hope some of the guys blow up their Senior year and we can keep them also. If not, this class could end up in the high 40's or low 50's, probably the worse class in my long State life.

I know its not of the same importance as it used to be with the transfer portal available, but I've been keeping up with recruiting to some degree since the Felker days and this is the worst HS recruiting class I can remember.

[vv83]

@Mods can you take down the 2025 sticky and sticky this one?

[Cardinal]

Trust Lebby to coach them up!

[Goldendawg]

@Mods can you take down the 2025 sticky and sticky this one?

I started both of these threads. The 2025 recruiting thread started on 4/25/24 with the last post being made on 2/4/25. I asked for it to be stickied. Through it's life, it got 639 replies, 251,449 views and was quickly rated five stars. I started the 2026 recruiting thread. It has been up since 6/11/25. It liked to have never got enough interest to be rated five stars. It is a long way to December signing day, but something positive better happen to this class before then. To date, it has 122 replies and only 15,694 views. Even I have little hope for the 2025 season and this class could easily end up with the worst rating of any high school class since I have been following it since 1963. Some say high school recruiting doesn't mean much anymore, but that being said I dare say we would take many of the players committed from schools ranked 1-36 and even some who will eventually pass us. Football is about dead at MSU including this site and I hate to see it.

[Goldendawg]

Update: As I predicted our HS class has just dropped to a National ranking of #44 with 15 known name schools behind us with a higher per player ranking and spots to fill. Someone posted that we would probably process 5 to 6 of these 25 commits before signing day. And just who do we replace them with, other processed players from other schools hoping they are better prospects? Right now our long list of targets on 24/7 has only 2 prospects who are even listed as "warm" toward us. Some of these 25 have offer sheets that are very lack luster for the SEC. Maybe some of these guys blow up their SR year, but can we keep them in that scenario? This has the makings of the worse ranked HS recruiting class in my long MSU life. Time will tell. Better be some real diamonds in the rough that we have now. I hope something good is going on behind the scenes that only our coaches know about.

[MrCoachKlein]

Yeah, it's not looking good. Only optimistic thing I can think of is maybe he's finding the diamonds in the rough that fit his system. I'll give that view a 0.1% chance. To be fair baseball coach change up probably stole some of the excitement from recruiting news.

[StarkVegasSteve]

Yeah, it's not looking good. Only optimistic thing I can think of is maybe he's finding the diamonds in the rough that fit his system. I'll give that view a 0.1% chance. To be fair baseball coach change up probably stole some of the excitement from recruiting news.

TRANSFER. PORTAL. I've said this for two years now, we're going to be portal heavy until next year. We may have 23 commitments right now, but we'll end up with 15-17 and we'll portal the rest. Now next year we may go 20-22 HS recruits but we have to get immediate depth and difference makers. We can't wait 2-3 years for guys to develop.

[msugolf]

TRANSFER. PORTAL. I've said this for two years now, we're going to be portal heavy until next year. We may have 23 commitments right now, but we'll end up with 15-17 and we'll portal the rest. Now next year we may go 20-22 HS recruits but we have to get immediate depth and difference makers. We can't wait 2-3 years for guys to develop.

Shhhh. Dont even try with them. They would rather melt and freak out. Some folks arent happy unless they are miserable

[Tripp McNeely]

TRANSFER. PORTAL. I've said this for two years now, we're going to be portal heavy until next year. We may have 23 commitments right now, but we'll end up with 15-17 and we'll portal the rest. Now next year we may go 20-22 HS recruits but we have to get immediate depth and difference makers. We can't wait 2-3 years for guys to develop.

Not a bad strategy actually, especially since it should be easier to recruit 2027 kids (and we seem to have really good "ins" with the top MS kids at least) if we can string together 5-6 wins. Selling 2-10 to 26' kids has been a struggle to say the least

[MrCoachKlein]

Shhhh. Dont even try with them. They would rather melt and freak out. Some folks arent happy unless they are miserable

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not miserable or freaking out. I understand we need to be portal heavy like SVS said. These 2 things aren't mutually exclusive. We need to be portal heavy and the current recruiting class is pretty lackluster.

[Goldendawg]

Update: Had fallen to #45 nationally, but got a commit from Fl yesterday , IOL, .86 6'3", 300 lbs., very impressive offer sheet for a welcome change. Moved us back to #44, 26 commits all 3 stars. Loadholt seems to be working hard to get his type players for the OL for the future. Still at least 15 programs that will pass this class in ranking unless some blow up their SR year and we keep them or process some and replace with higher ranked players. Long way until December but this class is very concerning at this point.

[StarkVegasSteve]

Update: Had fallen to #45 nationally, but got a commit from Fl yesterday , IOL, .86 6'3", 300 lbs., very impressive offer sheet for a welcome change. Moved us back to #44, 26 commits all 3 stars. Loadholt seems to be working hard to get his type players for the OL for the future. Still at least 15 programs that will pass this class in ranking unless some blow up their SR year and we keep them or process some and replace with higher ranked players. Long way until December but this class is very concerning at this point.

I think if we can get off to a good start, we'll process some and see those JA guys come on board, at least White. Albert may be too far gone.

[Goldendawg]

I think if we can get off to a good start, we'll process some and see those JA guys come on board, at least White. Albert may be too far gone.

Hope you are right. How many years has it been that we didn't even get one 4 star?

[StarkVegasSteve]

Hope you are right. How many years has it been that we didn't even get one 4 star?

It would be a first since I started following it in like 05ish. Of course I would love to know the last time that neither Mississippi State/OM/Southern Miss had ZERO commits from anyone in the top 5 in the state.

[Goldendawg]

Update: Commit #27 - 6'2" 195 WR from Copiah Lincoln, 1st JUCO. Not rated at this time so we are still at #44 national ranking.

[Brobi-wan]

I miss those big bodied receivers we used to have on that 2014 squad.

[StarkVegasSteve]

I miss those big bodied receivers we used to have on that 2014 squad.

Those were just projects that worked out. I mean Wilson was Mr. Basketball in Alabama and Fred Brown was just a raw athlete from Jim Hill.

[Todd4State]

Those were just projects that worked out. I mean Wilson was Mr. Basketball in Alabama and Fred Brown was just a raw athlete from Jim Hill.

I saw Fred Brown play when he was at Jim Hill. I would just say he was underrated moreso than he was raw.

He and Dan had some issues.

[StarkVegasSteve]

I saw Fred Brown play when he was at Jim Hill. I would just say he was underrated moreso than he was raw.

He and Dan had some issues.

He had some issues as well. Got caught plagiarizing like 4 times. The swept the first two times under the rug.....which by the way.....was an underrated quality of Dan's. Yea we had some guys get in trouble or get arrested during his tenure but a lot of stuff got swept under the rug. Heck Nick James should've gotten a DUI every weekend he was here but Mullen literally just had the cops follow him home from the bars every night.

And then there was the Pita Pit incident......IYKYK.