After back to back years of record-setting recruiting classes, the Badgers fell down the rankings with the 2022 class.
The second, and final, signing day was this past Wednesday. The Wisconsin Badgers added one scholarship player to their 2022 class when 3-star WR Chris Brooks, Jr. signed his national letter of intent. He was recruit No. 15 for Paul Chryst’s class and, when added to the five scholarship transfers that came in, brings the new players joining the program to 20 (this doesn’t include the walk-ons because I don’t think those numbers are 100% finalized yet).
Let’s take a look at where the three major recruiting sites (247 Sports, Rivals, On3) had the Badgers rated.
- 247 Composite: No. 45 overall; No. 11 B1G; avg. commit rating 87.24; two 4-stars
- Rivals: No. 46 overall; No. 12 B1G; avg. commit rating 3.07; one 4-star
- On3 Consensus: No. 34 overall; No. 7 B1G; avg. commit rating: 87.54; five 4-stars
247 also does a transfer portal team rankings and the Badgers were ranked as the No. 41 team in the nation, and No. 6 in the Big Ten, there…one spot behind Jackson State.
There’s no real way of sugarcoating this: the 2022 recruiting cycle was disappointing for the Badgers. They were unable to build on the momentum of their previous two classes and they only kept half of the six 4-star in-state recruits home. Now, there were plenty of extenuating circumstances (COVID caused in-person recruiting to be shutdown for over a year for instance) with the ‘22 class, but those rankings are not where Wisconsin should be in the nation, nor the Big Ten.
I don’t think we need another State of Wisconsin Football Recruiting post, so I will cut off my rantings there. As an FYI, all three sites had the same top-five schools: Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Texas, so expect to see them near the top of the preseason rankings as well.