Texas Football: 3 takeaways from the 2020 recruiting cycle

3. Coaching shifts impacts Big 12 recruiting rankings

One of the obvious reasons why the 2020 Texas football recruiting class wasn’t going to realistically finish up with a top three ranking in the nation for this cycle was all the coaching turnover in December. Texas turned over both major coordinators, along with the bulk of their positional coaches.

Texas could wind up making changes for the better by landing former Ohio State Buckeyes passing game coordinator Mike Yurcich as their next offensive coordinator and former Rutgers head coach Chris Ash as their next defensive coordinator. But former defensive coordinator Todd Orlando and offensive coordinator Tim Beck were good recruiters and their departure was going to have a negative impact up front with the 2020 class.

Other Big 12 programs saw a detriment to their 2020 recruiting classes by respective coaching changes over the course of the last calendar year. The Baylor Bears finished with the second worst 2020 signing class in the Big 12, according to the 247Sports Team Composite Rankings in the conference. After losing head coach Matt Rhule to the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, Baylor dropped down the national and Big 12 recruiting rankings.

Four of the Big 12 programs that finished up in the top five of the recruiting rankings for the 2020 cycle have head coaches that sat at the helm for at least three years. The Oklahoma State Cowboys and TCU Horned Frogs have Mike Gundy and Gary Patterson that are the longest-tenured head coaches in the Big 12. The West Virginia Mountaineers were the only program with a head coach with less than three years of experience at the helm in the Big 12 to finish up in the top five classes in the conference.