There is no secret to roster building in college football: The best teams typically get the best players. Sure, there are some guard rails — a team can have only 85 players on scholarship — but there is nothing preventing Alabama, for example, from signing 15 of the top 100 players in a recruiting cycle. But what if that weren’t the case, and there was an actual draft that allowed the worst teams to get the best players?
No, Arch Manning, you can’t pick your school. You will be drafted by a team that went 1-8 in the Big Ten in 2022.
Well, the chances of that happening are pretty much nonexistent. But it didn’t stop us from conducting our own Power 5 recruiting draft. Using Chris Vannini’s most recent 131 ranking, we went from worst (No. 1 pick Colorado) to first (No. 69 pick Georgia) and gave each team the opportunity to draft one player from the Class of 2023.
The “general managers” were Sam Khan Jr., Mitch Light, Brody Miller, Antonio Morales, Manny Navarro, Max Olson, Grace Raynor, Joe Rexrode, Pete Sampson and Ari Wasserman. We did our best to fill a specific need or add a local product when it made sense but often the right move was simply drafting the best player available. We included the four teams that will join the Big 12 in 2023 (BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF). All rankings are from the 247Sports Composite.
