Welcome to Stars Matter, a recruiting podcast from The Athletic.

I'm Mitch Light. He's Ari Wasserman. And Ari, let's talk recruiting. Though, I must say say we've been doing this show for about, what, four or five months?

This is the first week since we've been doing Stars Matter that we did not have one player

with a 247 composite ranking commit to an FBS school.

What do you say about that, Ari? We're just slow time a year. It's March, man. Not that we don't, by the way, not that we don't have a lot to talk about. We got a full show, but just not a lot in the way of commitments. That's what I love about recruiting, though. You don't need commitments to analyze and discuss things. So, yeah, I was. In fact, we probably spend about 90% of our show or more not talking about commitments. Yeah, Boston College got a quarterback who was a three star out of Texas, which I guess is marginally interesting, but he was number 732. Oh, so he does have a ranking. He does. When I checked the other, I check my, I think there was some ranking updates.

Called the BC bump is what it's called. Yes, yes. It happens all the time. I went to start up again because I had been on paternity leave and I don't know if people knew that because I was still doing the podcast. But I went to do this week in recruiting because it's coming back. so for those of you who have missed it

exciting news it's it's going to be back

but I like loaded up my computer and was looking through and it had some notes and stuff. I was like, this is very, very dry. So we're going to have another, you know, addition of it. We're just going to have to wait another week. but that doesn't mean that there isn't a bunch of theory and stuff that Mitch outlined for us to talk about. And I'm excited about the show. So, um, and of course to be humiliated again at the end of it. So let's just, uh, that's my goal. Yeah. So I guess when there's no, when there's no commitments, we'll just dive into, you know, questions and some of the things that we've noticed. So why don't we go ahead?

Yeah. So I guess when there's no commitments, we'll just dive into, you know, questions and some

of the things that we've noticed.

So why don't we go ahead?

Yeah, it's some interesting stuff.

I looked at the, uh, the 2023 rankings.

Um, and we had a question that you answered in your mailbag, I believe on Monday or Tuesday.

And we asked, we addressed this question on the podcast last week about can Notre Dame

basically ever sign a top three class? And our kind of our quick answer is like, yes, just need

to sign better players. But there's always hope. Well, and I knew they had a good class going for

2023. They started off quickly even before the 2020. Two classes were done.

But so far, they are number one in the nation in the 2023 rankings with nine commitments.

Now, we've seen that a lot. We've seen teams ranked high, but they don't have staying power

because they don't have enough elite players. Well, Notre Dame has staying power. They have two five stars, four top 100 players and like number 106 too. But here's

the key. Their average player rating in their 2023 class is 94.85. And without even last year,

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