With all the flipping that goes on this year, it's hard to know just where you stand until signing day. The one drawback to all the very early commits is that Ohio ends up losing a few. This year Ohio lost Davon Hamilton, but picked up McKnight in his place. Now they have lost Fair, but picked up Anderson to replace him. They also have lost Williams, and it would be great if they can land Christian in his place.

My guess on Maxwell is that he's solid. I think he'll be good, but I'm the wrong one to guess on that. For me QB is the hardest position to evaluate and guess whether a player in high school will be good in college.

Fortunately signing day is only a couple weeks away. I expect a few more changes between now and then, and a good class when it's all said and done, especially on the defensive side.

I think it has become obvious that early commits means nothing anymore. In the future, we will lose even more recruits to P5 conferences as the realities of the differences between them and us regarding full cost of attendance, guaranteed 4 year schollies, pay for family to attend games and who knows what else.

Ted has Krizancic on his chart as here already, so he is in my count of 68 current players:
http://www.bobcatattack.com/football/recruiting.asp

And I had Hale as a walk-on. If he is a scholarship athlete, then I agree with your numbers.

With the addition of Christian, I think this incoming group of defensive backs is the best class at a specific position grouping that we have ever had.

Jeff Christian
Maxwell Howell
Javon Hagan
Mayne Williams

3 of the 4 have P5 offers.

Beyond just the offers on paper, this group fills a big need. We are graduating two starters at safety AND all of our proven corners are Seniors. If this group is as good as they appear to be, they can play early. They certainly have the size and speed to scare opposing offenses.

EDIT:
Just looked closer... Combined, these four sported offers from the B1G, SEC, PAC-12, AAC, ACC, Mountain West, Sun Belt. Only conference I did not see offers from was the Big 12, although Howell's rival shows interest from a number of Big 12 programs.

Some saw ratings on these recruits at the time they were recruited and Poo Pooed these athletes. Now that the wonderful recruiting services have caught up to where the coaches were months ago I hope we can acknowledge that the Bobcat coaches are the pros over the services.

I never thought this class would get to 20, but here we are, apparently with 21 verbals. I love the last two additions, even with no other offers, and no stars. Those two are players.

Now I wonder how the pieces fit to get to 21.

With this being Poling's first offense (that I am aware of) I doubt he gets the boot.

But I get your point...

Updating an earlier post....

For those interested in a more comprehensive summary of recruiting rankings...

U = Completely unknown to the service
NR - Known but not ranked

---------------------------------------STARS/RATING
Commits-------------------Scout----ESPN--247Sports----Rivals
Jake Hale---------------------2-------2-68-----NR-----------U
Clayton Glasco--------------3-------3-73-----NR-----------U
London Cloud----------------3-------2-69-----NR---------2-5.4
Brian Arp---------------------2--------NR------NR---------2-5.3
Austen Pleasants-----------2--------NR-----2-79--------2-5.3
Najee Stevens Mackenzie--3--------NR------3-81---------2-5.3
Kyle Belack-------------------2--------NR-----2-74--------2-5.2
Mayne Williams---------------3-------3-71-----NR---------2-5.2
Quinton Maxwell-------------2--------U-------NR-----------U
Javon Hagan------------------2-------3-73-----NR---------2-5.4
Maxell Howell-----------------3-------3-73----2-72--------2-5.4
Elijah Ball---------------------3--------NR-----3-81---------3-5.6
Evan Croutch-----------------U--------U-------NR-----------U
Sam Mcknight-----------------U--------NR------3-84-------NR
Alex Alders-------------------3---------U--------U----------2-5.3
Josh Cooper-----------------NR--------U--------U-----------U
Joe Anderson----------------NR--------NR------U-----------U
Jeff Christian-----------------3-------3-77----3-84-------3-5.6
Marques Grimes--------------2--------NR------U-----------U
Matthew Seymour------------2--------NR------U-----------U
Demetrius Colbert------------3-------3-73----2-78--------U
Louie Zervos-----------------2-------3-75----2-75-------2-5.3

Other notes:
Scout assigns almost everyone in their service 2 stars even if they haven't viewed them, if they have a national ranking they have actually been reviewed, if not they have not been reviewed. Appears JUCO players that are known aren't just assigned 2 stars and remain unranked.

ESPN Starts 3 star ranking at 70.

247Sports starts 3 star ranking at 80.

Rivals Starts 3 star ranking at 5.5

As you can see we have 12 of 22 commits with a 3 star rating from at least one of the services.

Of the 10 guys without 3 star ratings, 6 of them are completely off the radar without any real rankings (not counting Scout 2 Star), one is a tick below 3 star on ESPN, 1 is a Long Snapper, 1 is from lightly recruited Nebraska, and the other is a WR that was committed to Marshall and is already enrolled.

As L.C. has pointed out elsewhere often our best players come from this group of unknowns. A good example of this would have been Sam McKnight but he just got reviewed by 247sports and is now tied for the highest rating in the entire class. If some of these other guys were reviewed I bet most of them would garner a 3 star rating from at least one service.

With the addition of Keith Key, we now show 21 Freshmen, 2 JUCOs and a transfer. The latest tweet from Michael George shows 20 faces. Maybe he doesn't count the JUCOs? In that case we are only over by 1 from his count. That still doesn't explain how you get to 85, though.

Cooper, Anderson, Howell, and Belack are enrolled, and if you exclude them it would take you down to only 19.

Another reason that Ohio's recruiting has improved so much the last several years may be related to the fact that Ohio is spending more money recruiting than they used to.
http://tinyurl.com/m5gdx2s

They have increased recruiting expenses by 55% since 2009, and now spend more than any other MAC team, at $264,928. Of course, I can think of a couple reasons why expenses might be on the high side in recent years. One is the non-urban location may mean higher travel costs. Another is the trips to/from British Columbia the last couple years.

The Luehrmans' are being recruited as greyshirts so they don't count towards this class.