Money, roster moves and recruiting limitations? Why building the next Boise State has gotten harder

BOISE STATE’S PEERS across the Group of 5 took notice in the fall.

The Broncos’ run to No. 3 seed in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff was remarkable in its own right. But equally noteworthy to coaches was that of Boise State‘s 26 starters across offense, defense and specialists, 22 had signed with the program out of high school, including running back and Heisman Trophy runner-up Ashton Jeanty, six other All-Mountain West selections and quarterback Maddux Madsen.

The Broncos laid the blueprint for the other half of major college football in 2024. Two weeks after the season ended, Boise State coach Spencer Danielson was back on the road in eastern Idaho recruiting another crop of high school prospects with his mind fixed on another critical task.

“A big push for me this offseason is fundraising,” he told ESPN. “It’s going to take everybody’s help to keep our staff and players here. But we’re no longer selling something that could happen. We’ve already done it here. A year like this year has the potential to change everything. It can catapult you to unknown waters.”

Boise State is now the standard in the Group of 5, the 65 programs across the AAC, C-USA, MAC, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences. And Danielson’s offseason objectives are a lens into the modern recruiting realities facing major college football’s smallest programs, where the gap to the Power 4 of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC is wider than ever and the sport’s increasingly disadvantaged underdogs are adapting to survive.

Under the crush of NIL deals, free transfers, conference realignment, a compressed recruiting calendar and ever-evolving NCAA governance, the degree of difficulty behind managing a roster has never been higher for the thin-resourced programs across the Group of 5. Amid the chaos, high school recruiting has not been spared on campuses where all-conference players are poached annually, budgets stay tight and coaching staffs engage in a constant battle to build competitive rosters and sign classes of high school prospects in a time of seismic change.

“We’re not recruiting the way we used to,” North Texas coach Eric Morris said. “I think now, every year you’re building a new team, and it’s almost a race to who can have the best roster in that particular season. There’s a new premium in college football.”

The pending settlement of House v. NCAA — the $2.8 billion lawsuit expected to reshape college athletics and introduce an era of revenue sharing with athletes — poses the latest challenge, a potentially existential threat to the Group of 5 and its smallest revenue generators.

Yet others across the level sense opportunity, and they’re exploring new avenues in recruiting in 2025, selling on-field success, scooping up talented prospects skipped over by bigger programs and pitching themselves in new ways, while pockets of talented high school recruits are progressively identifying fresh pathways through the Group of 5. Equipped with favorable geography, motivated donor bases and a path to the 12-team playoff, many of those same programs across the Group of 5 believe they’re poised to leverage the revenue sharing era and climb on the recruiting trail, which is still one the last remaining (relatively) level playing fields.

“The money has gotten so big from the portal; it’s not a sustainable model from the G5 standpoint,” Western Kentucky coach Tyson Helton said. “I think you have to redirect now and go back into high school recruiting. In this next phase, everybody will have the opportunity to position themselves to be competitive. And you don’t have excuses. Nobody has an excuse.”

THE SUGGESTION THAT Power 4 programs are recruiting high schools less is anecdotal. In fact, while Group of 5 recruiting classes shrunk by 11.5% from the 2019 to the 2024 recruiting cycles, per data collected by ESPN, the size of the average Power 4 high school class has dipped only slightly in recent years, falling 1.9% across the same cycles.

Miami (Ohio) coach Chuck Martin begs to differ with the math, at least for his program.

A two-time MAC champion in 11 seasons leading the RedHawks, Martin watched another string of starters and contributors land Power 4 transfers last month. Former Miami standouts including wide receivers Javon Tracy (Minnesota) and Reggie Virgil (Texas Tech) and defensive back Raion Strader (Auburn) are now some of the most compelling figures in Martin’s recruiting pitch. Each time one of his players moves on to a bigger school, Martin believes there’s an opportunity in the high school ranks.

“If Minnesota takes Javon Tracy from us, then Minnesota’s taking one less high school receiver,” Martin added. “So, I better go get the guy that Minnesota used to get out of high school and at least have him for a couple of years. Maybe he balls out and I lose him again.”

The modern landscape is inspiring creativity in coaches throughout the Group of 5, where leaders count a growing financial gap to the Power 4, the meddlesome dynamics of the transfer portal and steadily shifting NCAA regulation on transfers, eligibility and compensation among the factors driving down high school recruiting in 2025.

The condensed recruiting calendar is another spot Group of 5 coaching staffs are feeling the squeeze. In a different era of college football, Texas State coach GJ Kinne likely would have deployed his staff onto the recruiting trail in early January. But not this offseason.

“We don’t have the capability of sending everyone out on the road right now,” Kinne said. “Not because of money or anything. But we’re signing all these midyear transfers, and we have two low-level entry-level positions in the recruiting office. Past them, it’s all coaches.”

For thinly staffed programs such as Texas State, the weight of the winter portal window has turned the weeks immediately after the regular season into a feverish time devoted almost exclusively to player retention and transfer portal speed dating. A necessity for the sake of the Bobcats’ 2025 season, that portal emphasis also means less time for Kinne and his staff to evaluate high school film, fewer days for in-person visits and tighter windows for building the relationships that are integral to bolstering future recruiting classes.

Meanwhile, the prominence of the December early signing period has gained since its introduction in 2017 along with other updates to the recruiting calendar have the back end of the cycle creeping in too. With recruits scheduling visits and committing earlier than ever before in 2025, it’s an additional burden on smaller programs that rely heavily on senior year evaluations.

“Five years ago, guys would be committing more during the fall season of their senior year,” Danielson said. “It’s all sped up now. January used to be a situation where you’d go see some of your top guys. Now, that’s turned into crunch time because you have to know everybody by the time you get to April and May.”

High school recruiting still remains the most economical path to program building across all levels of the sport. Yet each December, the annual winter transfer portal arrives as a progressively more precarious double-edged roster management sword for the Group of 5.

ESPN’s Max Olson reported on Jan. 7 that the total count of Group of 5-to-Power 4 transfers over the first 29 days of this year’s portal window rose to 260, up 40% from the same span a year ago. By the time Ohio State won the national title on Jan. 20, the number had climbed to 320.

Unable to match six-figure NIL offers in the portal, Group of 5 programs are resigned to the certainty of losing top talent to the Power 4 each year. But the inherent unpredictability the portal places on roster numbers and the lane it provides programs to quickly fill depth chart needs have taken a toll on high school recruiting too.

“How many high school kids you sign changes every year,” Kinne said. “Fifteen? Eighteen? Twelve? I don’t exactly know. You sign as many good ones as possible because you’re always going to have guys leave that you don’t count on leaving.”

The strain of that uncertainty is significant, and the numbers bear out its impact on the Group of 5.

In the 2019 class — one of the last recruiting cycles before COVID-19 eligibility waivers and post-pandemic free transfer rules — the size of the average high school class among the current Group of 5 was 19.4, per data gathered by ESPN. In 2024, that average fell to 17.2, an especially stark drop when compared to the Power 4, which saw its average class size fall just from 20.7 (2019) to 20.3 (2024) over the same span.

“We’ve still taken over 20 high school kids the last two years,” Martin said. “But we’re like the dinosaurs: Nobody’s doing that anymore.”

The recruiting decline comes amid a period of sweeping change in the Group of 5, where patience has seemingly never been shorter. Staring down a series of hurdles, new coaches and those on the hot seat are straying from high school recruiting in favor of proven transfer talent more and more, exchanging long-term gains for short-term Band-Aids.

“I don’t think there’s a college coach in America who doesn’t want to recruit high school and sign the majority of players from high school or junior college,” Helton said. “But there’s pressure over job security and to win right away. You have to ask yourself if you can play the long game or if you want a quick fix.”

MEMPHIS QUARTERBACK SIGNEE Antwann Hill was an eighth grader when he landed an offer from Georgia. Scholarships from a collection of other Power 4 programs including Alabama, Florida and Tennessee came next, and Hill even spent a month committed to Colorado in the fall of his junior season. Upon the release of ESPN’s final 2025 recruiting rankings this week, he was the nation’s 94th-ranked recruit and No. 7 pocket passer in the cycle.

But Hill instead enrolled at Memphis earlier this month as the top-ranked Group of 5 signee in the class, lured by the potential of early playing time and his fit in the Tigers’ pass-heavy offense.

“You don’t have to go to the SEC to get the opportunity at the next level anymore,” Hill’s father, also Antwann, told ESPN. “The ultimate goal is for him to play on Sundays, so that’s how we treated it. If you can’t get on the field at a certain school, there’s really no point in being there.”

The overwhelming majority of the nation’s elite high school recruits are still funneling into the Power 4. Between the six classes from 2020 to 2025, all but 14 of the 1,800 prospects ranked inside the ESPN 300 signed somewhere within the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC. And as Power 4 schools splash NIL dollars on top high school recruits, the scales appear to be tipping further. After securing six ESPN 300 prospects in the 2022 class, Group of 5 schools have landed just five top 300 recruits over the three cycles since.

Yet among a select group of prospects on the Power 4-Group of 5 border, a different view of what non-power conference football has to offer is beginning to take hold. In a moment where portal churn has Group of 5 programs replacing experienced production annually, chances to compete for early playing time have seldom been more available across the level, where the potential of a lucrative jump to the Power 4 exists only one transfer portal cycle away.

“I realized I could go play anywhere,” Liberty running back signee Jaylon Coleman said. “But if I was at a bigger school, I was going to have to be a fourth string and wait, and they still might tell me to transfer out a year later.”

Like Hill, Coleman’s recruitment began before high school with an offer from Florida Atlantic. Over the next few years, offers rolled in from Power 4 programs Oregon, Texas A&M and Florida State before Coleman committed to the Flames last summer with system fit and a chance to see the field early as major components in his decision.

Coleman is intent on building a legacy at Liberty as soon as he joins the Flames. But he also isn’t naive to the pathways a couple of strong seasons could open for him.

No different from coaches across the level, high school recruits are noticing the trend of Group 5-to-Power 4 transfers. Minutes after four-star running back D’Shaun Ford committed to Louisiana-Monroe of the Sun Belt earlier this month, Ford told On3 he wanted to be “the next Ahmad Hardy,” the Warhawks running back who ran for 1,351 yards and 13 touchdowns in his freshman season last fall before transferring to Missouri.

“The sky’s the limit,” Coleman said. “I saw coaches switch jobs all throughout my recruitment. Hopefully, everything goes well for me at Liberty. But it’s a business at the end of the day, and everybody makes that known. Nothing is guaranteed.”

Early playing time was a factor for Akron offensive line signee Kenneth McManus IV, as well. In his eyes, revenue sharing could become another leveler in the recruiting game for schools in the Group of 5.

McManus, the lone Group of 5 signee at the 2025 Under Armour All-America Game, said he never centered his recruitment on NIL, focused instead on development and the chance to compete right away. While he understands the allure of big money and life in the Power 4, McManus also believes the opportunity for players to be paid directly by their schools could have recruits like himself, right on the edge of Power 4 football, thinking twice about turning away from the Group of 5.

“It’s going to change things for those guys that go Power 4 just to be on the team,” McManus said. “That might make them actually consider going G5 if they can go play and still make some money for themselves.”

WHY NOT US? It’s a question Group of 5 programs across the country are asking themselves.

Vast structural and financial hurdles remain, but the automatic playoff bid reserved for the Group of 5’s highest-ranked conference champion under the current format has made the dream of reaching the 12-team field more attainable than ever. The next Boise State could emerge from any one of those 65 campuses next fall.

Coaches across the level, however, believe the true challenge facing any of the Group of 5 programs that intend to compete perennially in college football’s next phase won’t be reaching the playoff just once but managing a sustained run of success.

“You can build a team for one year; that’s what we’re all chasing,” Northern Illinois coach Thomas Hammock said. “But we beat Notre Dame and everyone started scouting our roster. That’s why you lose seven guys to P4 programs. It’s not just if you can win. It’s do you have the money to hold onto guys after you win?”

Revenue sharing won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution for the Group of 5. And it won’t close the gap to the Power 4, where administrators have suggested that as much as 75% of the $20.5 million that each school will be permitted to share in direct payments to its athletes via NIL deals could go to football, well ahead of any of the scattered projections that have been made related to Group of 5 budgets.

Even among Group of 5 schools with the best resources, competing dollar for dollar with the nation’s biggest programs remains a pipe dream. For coaches at the G5 level, for whom every cent counts, there’s some creative financial brainstorming going on to try to stretch their funds to stay competitive.

Texas State’s Kinne, for instance, chose not to send his full staff to the American Football Coaches Association’s convention earlier this month. At Western Kentucky, Helton is weighing the possibility of having his team sleep at home on the night before home games and pushing the cost of the roughly $75,000 hotel bill straight to the program’s revenue sharing bucket. Other coaches believe scheduling extra “money games” against Power 4 programs and scrapping unnecessary travel could help foot the bill.

As Group of 5 leaders commit increasing time and resources to make sure they’re not among those left behind, fundraising remains central to the recruiting conversation.

Toledo was the first MAC program to establish an NIL collective, and since NIL was introduced in 2021, athletic director Bryan Blair has made the Rockets a fundraising leader within the Group of 5. Absent major TV and mammoth conference distributions, schools such as Toledo are preparing to live on a more grassroots approach to revenue sharing dollars, leaning on ticket sales, institutional and conference-level support and, most crucially, donations.

Under the proposed House settlement, schools across the country will soon be paying their athletes directly from athletic department funds, shifting control from the booster-run collectives that have sprouted in the NIL era in-house. On a Group of 5 campus equipped with deep-pocketed donor bases, fundraising can be a new driver in a post-House revenue sharing era, capable of transforming roster retention, easing the rigors of roster management and bringing trickle-down stability to high school recruiting.

“We’re not out trying to match everybody in the universe financially,” Blair said. “But you certainly have to be a player in the ballpark, and we can do that by fundraising from the center and using those dollars on football.”

Schools and conferences are scrounging for dollars, navigating new regulations and searching for ways to win on the margins. But in 2025, the time-honored selling points of winning and proven success still remain paramount on the recruiting trail.

Hammock said Northern Illinois’ upset of Notre Dame in September gave the Huskies “instant credibility” when he returned to the recruiting trail. Toledo coach Jason Candle has made the development of All-MAC cornerback-turned-NFL first-round draft pick Quinyon Mitchell a central piece of his recruiting pitch. At Boise State, Danielson said he might not fully understand the full scope of the Broncos’ 2024 season until a few years down the line.

For any of the 65 schools across the Group of 5, the potential multiyear impact of a playoff appearance in a storybook season such as Boise State’s presents a mouthwatering proposition.

“It’s millions and millions of dollars in exposure and revenue that you get a chance to leverage for more success,” Blair said. “That’s the sweet spot: When you’re doing it right and having success, you can leverage the moment.”

The world of high school recruiting has become increasingly complicated for a Group of 5 whose mechanics in recruiting — for the time being — still resemble a bygone time in college football. But from the AAC to the C-USA, MAC, MWC and Sun Belt, schools are modernizing, coaches are seeking out ways to adapt and programs are preparing, some eagerly, for the opportunity to pay their players.

Yet as Danielson pondered the future earlier this month, his mind returned to the collection of former signees who powered the playoff team at Boise State, affirming a core belief of where success for the Broncos, and the rest of Group of 5, still lies.

“No matter how these things change in the sport, we are going to recruit high school kids first and foremost. That is our life blood,” he said. “We need to hit home runs on high school kids. I believe when we do that, regardless of where college football goes, we’ll always be on the cutting edge as one of the best teams in the country.”