Biggest Winners and Losers of the 2023 College Football Late Signing Window
Wednesday, Feb. 1, marked national signing day, as high school prospects across the country signed with their respective college schools. In college football, the once drama-filled day isn't as exciting as year's past, thanks to the sport's early signing period, which allows prospects to sign with schools in late December.
But there are still a handful of talented guys that wait until NSD to sign their letters of intent, and that holds true for 2023.
Let's run through the biggest winners and losers of the 2023 late signing window for college football.
Winner: Arizona State Lands 4-Star QB Jaden Rashada
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What a journey 4-star QB Jaden Rashada has gone through over the last couple of months. On Dec. 21, Rashada initially signed his letter of intent with Florida, committing to the Gators in early November. Previously, Rashada was verbally committed to Miami since June.
It looked like the Gators had finally landed their quarterback of the future, until things messily unraveled. According to reports from the Orlando Sentinel and The Athletic, Rashada's NIL deal he signed for $13 million fell apart. On Jan. 20, Florida released Rashada from his LOI he signed, and he was officially free to sign elsewhere.
On Wednesday morning, Rashada announced that he would be signing with Arizona State. It's a big get for new head coach Kenny Dillingham's 2023 class, which now ranks 46th nationally.
Rashada is the No. 7 quarterback in this year's class, and the sixth-ranked prospect out of the state of California. Rashada's father, Harlen, played defensive back for ASU in the 1990s. The QB enters a pretty crowded Sun Devils quarterback room, which features seven signal-callers. Notre Dame transfer Drew Pyne is expected to be the starter in Tempe next season, but Rashada's addition gives Dillingham a talented quarterback for the future.
"Arizona State now lands one of the most talented throwers of the football in this class," 247Sports' Steve Wiltfong said of the QB's commitment. "With Rashada, the ball comes out beautifully. If you stack arm talent in this class, he's at the top of the list. There is a lot of developmental upside and a lot of exciting traits in Jaden Rashada as a quarterback. And for Arizona State, it gives them a potential franchise player at the game's most important position."
It's been quite a ride for Rashada's recruiting journey. We'll see if his collegiate career is a bit less like a roller coaster.
Loser: Oregon Misses on 5-star ATH Nyckoles Harbor, Who Commits to South Carolina
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Oregon finished NSD with the No. 8-ranked class in the country, a great finish for head coach Dan Lanning, who enters year two in Eugene. But the Ducks lost out to Shane Beamer and South Carolina for coveted 5-star athlete Nyckoles Harbor, who announced on Wednesday that he would be joining the Gamecocks' 2023 recruiting class.
The announcement was a bit of a surprise, as Harbor was trending to Oregon as of late. The Washington, D.C., prospect, ranked No. 19 overall for 2023, took a visit to Oregon just this past weekend. 247Sports reported that Oregon was in a good position to land Harbor early on Wednesday morning.
But in the end, South Carolina prevailed. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of South Carolina landing Harbor over Oregon is Harbor's desire to run track in college, as well. Oregon has a revered track and field program, as well as world-class facilities that host numerous national and global track events annually. Here's more on South Carolina's track impact on Harbor, from 247Sports' Brad Crawford:
"The allure of starring on the Gamecocks' track team under legendary coach Curtis Frye — who has coached at South Carolina for nearly 30 years — was also impactful. Harbor reportedly wants to sprint in the 2024 Olympics as a dual-sport star and had that opportunity no matter where he eventually landed.
"We are all for two sport athletes," Beamer said in September after a win over Charlotte. "We are recruiting one right now that would be an unbelievable track athlete and football player here as well."
Harbor is a talented player who played on both sides of the ball in high school. Per MaxPreps, Harbor accounted for 439 receiving yards and five touchdowns last season, as well as 45 total tackles with 16.5 for loss. If we're lucky, we might see Harbor take the field immediately for South Carolina in 2022.
With the addition of Harbor to the Gamecocks' 2023 class, it jumps to 16th nationally. That's an improvement from Beamer's 2022 class, which finished 24th. Harbor is the seventh-highest-rated prospect in Gamecocks history.
Winner: Alabama Inks No. 1 Overall Class with a Record Nine 5-stars
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After finishing last year with the No. 2 class behind Texas A&M, Nick Saban and Alabama have regained the top spot for 2023. The Tide brought in the nation's No. 1 overall recruiting class for this year, featuring a whopping 27 blue-chip recruits. Nine of those are 5-star prospects, which, per 247Sports, is a recruiting record.
Most of Bama's 5-star prospects have already enrolled at Alabama, including safety Caleb Downs, offensive tackle Kadyn Proctor, running back Justice Haynes and cornerback Desmond Ricks. Downs and Haynes are the No. 1 and 2 prospects out of the state of Georgia, respectively, so Saban landing them instead of the Bulldogs is a big get for his 2023 class.
Although the class has a record number of 5-stars, the class ranks third all-time in 247Sports' rankings, behind TAMU's historic 2022 class and Bama's No. 1 overall class from 2021. Still, this is Bama's 10th No. 1 overall class in the last 13 years. Makes sense as to why the Tide are consistent national title threats.
Alabama added a couple of guys from the transfer portal in this cycle, as well. The Tide landed former Georgia linebacker Trezmen Marshall and Maryland tight end CJ Dippre.
With a recruiting class like it just put together for 2023, Bama's dominance isn't going away any time soon.
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Loser: Dabo's NIL Comment from December
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Just months after telling reporters that he is building a Clemson program on God's name, image and likeness, it appears you also need cold, hard cash to have a successful recruiting class. During December's early signing period, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney made headlines when he said this:
"Honestly, I was thinking about it this summer ... and honestly, for me, we built this program on NIL," Swinney said via the State. "We really did. And it's probably different than what you're thinking of. We built this program in God's name, image and likeness."
Unsurprisingly, the quote went viral on Twitter. But fast forward just a couple of months, and Swinney appears to be changing his tune a bit on NIL. During his NSD press conference on Wednesday, Swinney ended it by—wait for it—asking Clemson boosters to donate to the school's NIL collectives:
The jokes about Swinney asking boosters for NIL money just months after saying he was building a recruiting class in God's name image and likeness write themselves. But it would appear that Swinney is changing his tune regarding the reality of what drives recruiting and NIL deals—money. In 2014, Swinney famously said "he would go do something else" other than coaching if college athletes were to be paid. Fast forward to 2023, and NIL deals are at the heart of most recruiting classes, whether coaches admit it publicly or not.
Could this be the start of a sort of evolution for the longtime Clemson head coach? It might be just what the Tigers need, after back-to-back seasons of missing out on the College Football Playoff. Last month, Swinney fired offensive coordinator Brandon Streeter, who had been an assistant at Clemson since the end of the 2014 season. Instead of replacing Streeter with someone on Clemson's existing staff, Swinney made an aggressive hire in landing former TCU OC Garrett Riley to run the offense.
Some of college football's best coaches have taken on the evolve-or-die mantra that is paramount in the current era of the sport. Nick Saban did so back in 2014, moving away from his ground-and-pound, defense-wins-championships philosophy and hiring Lane Kiffin to install an uptempo offense with run-pass elements. Doing so has resulted in Alabama winning three national championships.
Perhaps we're seeing Swinney embrace what it takes to win big in college football in 2023, rather than fight against it.
Loser: The Lack Of NIL Regulation
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Speaking of Nick Saban, the Alabama head coach told an interesting story regarding a Tide player that had entered the transfer portal. While attending last week's Alabama Football Coaches Association convention, Saban said a player in the portal, who the coach did not name, requested $500,000, in addition to the player's girlfriend being admitted to Alabama's law school, for him to stay with the team.
Per AL.com and Outkick, Saban told the coaches in attendance that he showed the player the door. The report also added that the player requested the girlfriend's law school tuition to be paid. Per U.S. News, University of Alabama law school tuition costs $23,920 for in-state students and $43,370 for out-of-state students. Saban also said that a separate 2023 player asked for $800,000 in return for his commitment to the Tide.
Alabama's head coach, who inked 2023's No. 1 overall class on Wednesday, is no stranger to embracing NIL deals and their existence in college football. When the NCAA adopted the new NIL rules in June 2021, Saban made headlines when he said that quarterback Bryce Young, who wasn't even Bama's starting QB yet, had already made almost seven figures on a deal.
But as long as the NCAA can't legally regulate the current NIL climate, players can request things like admission to law school for their significant other. Even for a coach who's adapted as much as Saban, recruiting with NIL comes with its challenges.
"We're not allowed to be involved in NIL, at least from my perspective," Saban said via AL.com in December. "I do think that it did have an impact on recruiting with some players. And I don't know how you make comments about things. That really is kind of a crazy, a little bit of a crazy situation right now, and there's not really a sensible response to it.
"So I don't know how to really respond to it other than the fact that we do a great job of trying to sell what we can do to create value for players and what they can create for themselves here because our players have done a really good job of creating value for themselves in name, image and likeness by what they do after they get here."
It's unclear if there are other requests of this ilk from players in college football, but one can assume there are similar stories out there.
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