National Signing day brought some heartache, some cheers and some sighs of relief Wednesday as state of Florida Football Bowl Subdivision programs tried to bolster their recruiting classes.

FSU was again the cream of the crop, while UCF turned in another solid effort despite some late poaching from other schools. Florida rallied to nearly secure a top-10 class, Miami had a solid recruiting cycle, USF made a huge comeback from the bottom of the ladder and the new coaching staffs at FAU and FIU put together commendable efforts to give us, perhaps, visions of things to come in the state’s crazy recruiting circles.

Though the Seminoles lost out on prize LB Levi Jones, that was about all FSU lost. DT Marvin Wilson’s announcement that he would sign with the Seminoles capped an impressive cycle for the ‘Noles. They also snared the best RB in the country in Cam Akers, two of the best DBs in Stanford Samuels III and Cyrus Fagan and a beast in DE Josh Kaindoh for the country’s No. 6 recruiting class.

To listen to the cries of help from the members of Gator Nation, one might have thought this class was doomed to mediocrity. The Gators, however, rallied with some big gets on Wednesday, with Lakeland WR James Robinson, lineman T.J. Slaton and perhaps the biggest steal in the entire state in Miami Columbus DB Lacedrick Brunson. Lacedrick who, you say? Just wait.

Miami consistently picked up quality players during the cycle, and even though there were a few decommits, they just replaced them with other comparable players. The star of the class is Jeff Thomas, a flashy receiver out of East St. Louis, Ill. Thomas was MVP of the Under Armour All-American Game. OT Navaghn Donaldson, DE D.J Johnson and CB Trajan Bandy help round out the class.

Dear Scott Frost, welcome to recruiting, UCF style. Your slogan should  be “beware of poachers.” The Knights , yet again, fell victim to late advances from other schools, losing junior college DT Jamari Chisholm to Texas and DE Antwan Owens to Georgia Tech. Nonetheless, the Knights’ class was pretty darn good, headlined by WR Marlon Williams, RB Bentavious Thompson and LB Sterling Jones. 

If we were just grading based on the Bulls’ performance Wednesday, USF would have scored an A-plus. Landing Miami Southridge teammates WR Kevaughn Dingle and S Naytron Culpepper were huge gets, but if new coach Charlie Strong had been able to keep any of the players who followed WIllie Taggart to Oregon, this class would have been graded higher.

Well, Lane Kiffin did it. In his first two months on the job, he was able to turn a recruiting mess into a legitimate class that ranked just ahead of USF and FIU. The big get is East Mississippi junior college transfer QB De’Andre Johnson, Florida’s Mr. Football in 2014 during his time at Jacksonville First Coast. ATH Ahman Ross and WR Jordan Merrell are some other strong players, while Kiffin also pulled in some junior college talent.

Butch Davis was right back in his element when he took over as the Panthers’ head coach and his knowledge of the South Florida area paid off. The former Miami head coach landed 20 signees in the class and all but one of them are from South Florida. The headliner is ATH Dorian Hall of South Broward and two big offensive linemen in Cody Bowes and Willa Pierre.

* The grades are not a reflection of how the teams did against each other. They are a judgment of how the coaching staffs did in terms of meeting team needs.

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