It’s here!
The 2026 ISD Fab 50
College football can be a lot like the rest of society. Every once in a while there is a scrappy underdog who rises up and achieves success, but that’s not exactly common.
For the most part, the rich stay rich and we’ve seen that happen again and again with recruiting. There are a handful of outlier programs who have players committed in the 2026 ISD Fab 50 like Maryland, South Carolina, Utah, Houston, Texas Tech, BYU, and Syracuse, none of them have multiple commitments.
LSU, Alabama, Oregon, USC, Texas A&M, Ohio State, and Notre Dame are the programs that do have multiple commitments in the Fab 50. Those seven programs have a combined 31 of my top-50 prospects in this cycle. With commitments headed to Miami, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida State, and Ole Miss as well, that’s 83.7% of 43 who are currently committed to teams who are capable of being College Football Playoff contenders in any given year.
The rich get to feast while the crumbs are left over for everyone else.
I have four Notre Dame commitments in this version of the Fab 50: Rodney Dunham (14), Ian Premer (30), Khary Adams (40), and Joey O'Brien (49). We’ll see how many Notre Dame commits end up in the final version at the end of the process, but this isn’t unprecedented. Bryce Young, Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa, CJ Carr, and Cam Williams were all in my 2024 Fab 50. It is a big difference from 2023 and 2025 when the Irish had only one each in those cycles (Charles Jagusah and Will Black).
The strength of Notre Dame’s current class is the depth from top to bottom, but it’s very important to land potential difference-makers at the top of each class. I think they have that in Dunham, Premer, Adams, and O’Brien.
I don’t have any other Notre Dame commits in my top-100. (Check the comments for the rest of my top-100) That doesn’t mean we won’t see others like Ebenezer Ewetade, Grayson McKeogh, Preston Fryzel, Kaydon Finley, Ayden Pouncey, or others make that leap before the cycle is over. I think there’s a chance it will happen for at least one or two of them.
2. Alabama has the most commitments with six and LSU is second with five.
I really don’t care where this Alabama class ends up being ranked. This looks like a Nick Saban type of class to me with ridiculously long and athletic defensive backs (CB Jorden Edmonds and S Jireh Edwards), explosive edge rush talent (Jamarion Matthews) at the top for them. I have 10 Alabama commits in my top-100 prospects.
3. It might be surprising to see Georgia only have one in the Fab 50 (QB Jared Curtis), but they have several commits who just missed out on making the list like OL Ekene Ogboko, TE Kaiden Prothro, S Zechariah Fort, and DB Caden Harris. They also have a couple of wide receivers committed that I think are massively underrated.
Craig Dandridge’s junior film is as good as any receiver in the country and he’s freaky explosive (32.8 vertical and 9-10.9 broad jump). I’m a big fan of Brady Marchese as well.
4. I don’t know if Notre Dame fans should take it as good news or bad news that I believe that this class USC is putting together is the most complete one they’ve had since back when Pete Carroll was coach. It’s because the headliners are mostly from both sides of the line of scrimmage rather than the skill talent.
Keenyi Pepe is the kind of talent who could start for them at tackle as a freshman. Luke Wafle should immediately jump into the rotation on the defensive line. Those two and TE Mark Bowman are their three who I have in the Fab 50, but there are six more I have in the top-100. Five of them play defense.
Is it good that USC is deciding to not play Notre Dame anymore right at the time they may sign a class that could help them make a series a lot more competitive than it has been? the Trojans have lost 10 of the last 14 matchups. I guess the results and the timing of it is in the eye of the beholder.
I’ll call it sad news. They are paying top dollar to land these kids and will probably keep most of them. All of that just for the chance to hopefully make a Big Ten play-in game?
No, I will not stop dunking on these idiots for this extremely dumb decision to get rid of a rivalry that has started 100 years ago.
5. I think the 2026 cycle is as loaded at edge rusher as any class I’ve scouted, which includes all of the last decade. Zion Elee is my top prospect in the entire class. Dunham, LSU commit Trenton Henderson, Tank Jones, Jamarion Matthews, and Wafle are the others I have in the Fab 50, but there’s a whole bunch of others who just missed the cut for me (eight more in my next 50).
Then there’s a whole bunch of others who are like Ewatade who I feel have elite traits and could easily end up as top-50ish prospects if they progress rapidly during their senior seasons.
If the 2026 cycle ends up producing 15 day one or day two NFL picks at defensive end, it would not shock me one bit.
6. If I’m picking my five favorite prospects who aren’t committed to Notre Dame from the Fab 50, it would be QB Dia Bell (Texas), OT Kelvin Obot (Utah), DT James Johnson (flipped from UGA to Texas), WR Jase Mathews (uncommitted), OT Samuelu Utu (Alabama), and ATH Jermaine Bishop (Texas).
Okay, I cheated and picked six. I didn’t want to leave out Bishop, who fits the description of “baller” to a tee.
I probably could have picked 20, which probably has more to do with how I feel about the overall quality of the class as a whole. Linebacker is about the only position that I would classify as weaker when it comes to overall depth at the position. There’s still plenty of solid to very good prospects at the position.
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