A blend of commitments, decommitments and flips are affecting the 2021 college football recruiting class rankings with less than two weeks until the start of the early signing period.
After climbing up the rankings in the previous two updates, LSU took a step back following decommitments from two defensive prospects, including ESPN 300 OLB Naquan Brown.
Tennessee was a top-five class all the way through October thanks to a strong start, but two recent decommitments, including one from five-star LB Terrence Lewis, has bumped them out of the top 10 for the first time this cycle. The Vols class still remains within the top five of the competitive SEC ranks, though.
USC has made a dramatic improvement on the recruiting trail as compared to a year ago, but the Trojans slipped in the rankings with the decommitment of ESPN 300 QB Jake Garcia, a California native who played his senior season in the state of Georgia. While they fell a few spots, USC's class still holds a commitment from another top-rated QB, Miller Moss, and is also in the mix for one of the top remaining uncommitted QB prospects, Jaxson Dart.
North Carolina, which added a big in-state TE in Bryson Nesbit and saw some other teams around it lose commitments, climbed back into the top 10.
Wisconsin is assembling one of the top classes in the Big Ten and now sits on the cusp of the top 15 nationally. The Badgers, whose class is anchored by several key ESPN 300 offensive line commits, added four-star LB Jake Ratzlaff, an agile and physical player who was also a Division I hockey prospect.