Athlon Sports compiled the football recruiting rankings for the past five years and averaged them out to determine how good the rosters for the FBS programs will be in 2017. And unlike me, their findings for the California Golden Bears weren’t pretty...
Nationally, the Bears were tied for 46th with the Vanderbilt Commodores. Our score was heavily affected by an unsurprisingly poorly ranked 2017 class for Justin Wilcox’s first year. If we throw out that 70th-ranked class, then our average rises from 47.2 to 41.5.
But to be more of a realist, it would take a lot of miracles for Cal to become a national player in 2017, so maybe we should look at something a little more relevant in the short-term—how we stack up in the Pac-12.