Owen Pustell
The Michigan Wolverines completed their perfect 15-0 season with a 34-13 victory over the Washington Huskies in the NCAA national title game on Jan. 8. A Big Ten team beating a soon-to-be Big Ten team to secure a title seems pretty removed from Ole Miss, right? Not quite.
Michigan stands apart from pretty much all of the recent national champions in one key area: recruiting. No, Michigan does not struggle to bring in top talent like some schools do, but the Wolverines are far from the top of the charts.
In the past five classes (2020-2024), Michigan has an average national class rating of about 13. Accordingly, the Maze and Gold are rated by 247Sports as having the 14th most talented roster in college football. Despite this ranking, they managed to beat both Alabama, the No. 1 team in total talent, and Ohio State, the No. 3 team in the country at one point. So how did they pull this off?
Head Coach Jim Harbaugh did things his way, and it worked. He recruited classes stocked with high-floor players, focused on culture over flash and built a roster that had zero holes and just enough star talent to edge out anybody in the country.
The focus was on assembling a great staff more than collecting freakish players. During its 2023 campaign, Michigan started just three top-100 players according to the 247Sports composite rankings. Three. The average rating for an Alabama starter in the Rose Bowl was .9510. For Michigan, it was just .9010. It never felt like that team was the underdog, but Michigan certainly carried that chip on its shoulder.
How does this relate to Ole Miss? The Rebels have a similar team-building formula. Ole Miss will never be a perennial recruiting power. At least, not the same way that Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State are.
That being said, Kiffin and his staff have found a nice niche in the college football world. They recruit high school just enough to have a base roster, but they mostly focus their attention on the transfer portal. The Rebels have landed the top transfer class in back-to-back years and might start as many as 16 transfers next season on offense and defense combined.
It might sound like bandaging the fallout from poor recruiting and development, but the truth is quite the contrary. Kiffin and his staff, whom many have been critical of in the past, have created one of the most competitive cultures in the sport.
No one is safe. Kiffin recruits pretty much every able-bodied player in the portal and does a good job of landing the top talent. Every player on the roster has to work like his job is on the line, and put simply, that may very well be the case. This year, Kiffin is bringing in the top two defensive linemen, Walter Nolen and Princely Unmanmielen, despite losing just one starter to the draft. He is stockpiling talent, and it should pay off.
Culture breeds champions. Michigan had a well-established competitive environment that led them to a national title, and the Rebels seem to be on the same path. Next year, Ole Miss has the potential to start the season as one of the top five teams in the country. All that for a roster that is essentially a band of misfits? It is a pretty encouraging start to something that could be brewing in Oxford.
