Welcome to Stars Matter, a recruiting podcast from the athletic.

I'm Mitch Light. He's Ari Wasserman. Ari, let's talk recruiting. Yeah, let's talk recruiting.

How was that, by the way? You always say I'm far too robotic. Yes. I was a little tighter there. Is that okay? It sounded less awkward, yes. I thought it was good. Still awkward, but less awkward? You're not 100% there, but improvements all I can ask for right now. That's what I'm striving for. Welcome to Stars Matter, a recruiting show from The Athletic. I'm Mitch Light, joined by Ari Wasserman. How are you doing today, Ari?

I just striving for. Welcome to Stars Matter, recruiting show from The Athletic. I'm Mitch Light, joined by Ari Wasserman. How are you doing today, Ari?

I just said that. Yeah, but it's like, just say it like you're talking to me. Okay. So we have not, we've talked since, but we have not had the podcast in two weeks since signing day, a big signing day, an epic signing day, some huge surprises.

Now that you've had a couple weeks to digest, anything, what surprised you other than

Travis Hunter?

You know, Travis Hunter in Texas A&M, which wasn't a surprise because we saw that coming.

As you, you know, look back, anything jump out at you?

You know, obviously the thing that jumps out at you the most is Texas A&M, you know, and what they're doing because, you know, it's been a team that has, you know, recruited fairly well. I'm talking top 10 classes in the last, you know, five, 10 years. It wouldn't be weird to see A&M up there. But the way that they are dominating right now is at a level that even Alabama hasn't, you know, in terms of they are on track right now to potentially sign the best class in the history of modern day recruiting.

And there's five-star prospects still out there like Harold Perkins and Shemar Stewart that are still leaning towards A&M.

Jacoby Matthews from Louisiana. A&M is in the mix there. I mean,

you know, their class could get up to 30 guys and 15 or 16 of them could be top 100 players,

you know, and six or seven five star prospects. It's like that is unbelievable. And the thing

that is interesting, and I don't

remember if we discussed this the last time, is that, you know, I get a lot of questions in the mailbag

and, you know, on Twitter. And it's just like, what is going on at A&M? And I think that the,

the thought process is that NIL is the reason for all of this or that A&M has some sort of

financial system or situation right now that's giving them the boost and helping them

recruit that way. And it's like maybe that's true. But I just don't know tangibly what that is.

So it's hard to really dissect that. And I get

like a little frustrated about this because it's the same way that I used to get frustrated

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