Twitter Tuesday: Top 2018 classes, Zaire's destination, Miami

The next installment of the #TwitterTuesday mailbag is here, as Rivals.com readers ask National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell questions via social media.

Here are four questions for our third edition, including which programs could land in the top five of the final 2018 team recruiting rankings.

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This is a great question, although it is very early to make such predictions. Luckily for everyone, I’m dumb enough to throw a guess out there.

Alabama will be in the top five - I don’t care that they only have two commitments right now. And Clemson, currently No. 6 in our rankings with eight commitments, likely won’t make it in the top five because of limited numbers but could end up with the highest average star rating of everyone.

In addition to Alabama, Ohio State, LSU and Florida State will make the top five with the elite recruiters they have on staff and at head coach, and the fifth team in that group will be USC; Clay Helton will clean up in state.

So who, in addition to Clemson, does that leave out of the top five that could surprise some folks? Michigan, Penn State, Miami, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Texas, who all either finished highly last year or were expected to make a big push.

Of course, as I mentioned, predictions like this in May are useless, but that’s the fun of #TwitterTuesday - you get to show this to me in February of 2018 and tell me how dumb I am.

I expect the ‘Canes to compete for a division title regardless of who the starting quarterback is for a few reasons.

First, this is a young and improving football team in an ACC division without a clear power program for 2017. Virginia Tech took the division last year with UNC and Miami on their heels, and all three must replace top quarterbacks, so offensively we don’t know what we could see. But defensively, I like direction the ‘Canes are headed - I like the way they finished the 2016 season against some talented offenses, and the Miami defense will carry them to the title.

Can N'Kosi Perry, a true freshman who has just graduated high school, win the starting job from day one? There’s certainly a chance, especially with no true No. 1 emerging from the spring for Miami. We all know Brad Kaaya should have returned to Miami and this wouldn’t even be a question, but Perry has the potential to be the best option for Mark Richt. If he is, he will have the benefit of a solid defense on his side. The ACC Coastal is there for the taking.

I love this question, and my answer is simple and direct – there is zero benefit to add the number of offers you’ve received in any tweet.

We’ve all seen the tweets from prospects saying “blessed to receive my 23rd offer from such and such school,” and I can tell you that coaches roll their eyes when they see that. When this trend started years ago, I started calling kids who did this “offer collectors” who just loved the attention, kept an accurate yet unnecessary count of the number of offers they’ve received and most would slowly narrow down their lists from 20 to 15 to 10 to 5 and so on.

Now, I’m not saying that prospects who include the number of offers in each tweet are bad kids, far from it. In fact, I’m sure many of them are doing so because they’ve seen other recruits they follow or look up to do it in previous years.

But when college coaches see this, they can become concerned that a player is a little too invested in the number of offers he has received and less concerned with which offers he has. I could name names when it comes to some of the biggest “offer collectors” I’ve seen since Twitter became a big deal in recruiting, but of course I won’t as to not embarrass anyone. But if I’m a parent or coach or trainer helping a prospect out with the recruiting process, I’m telling him to simply leave the number out of tweets when announcing a new offer. There is zero upside to it.

I’ll be honest, I don’t follow transfers or graduate transfers that closely. I have enough to do keeping up with the thousands of 2018 and 2019 prospects out there, and once prospects go off to college I leave them alone unless they want to keep talking to me.

So with Zaire, my guess would be just that – a guess. However, based on what I see I think there’s a chance he’s waiting to see if Florida gets a pass for recent graduate transfers Anthony Harrell and Mason Halter not meeting academic requirements, which kicked in an SEC-only rule excluding the Gators from taking another grad transfer for three years. SEC spring meetings are coming up and that SEC-only rule could be repealed, freeing Zaire to head to Gainesville.

I mean, why else has he waited so long to make a decision? Zaire and his camp have kept things very close to the vest and the four schools he’s choosing from – Texas, Florida, Wisconsin and Harvard – are assumed to be the finalists, but who knows, right? He’s been rumored to be making a decision a few times with the latest delay apparently because he wanted to wait until after he walked in Notre Dame’s graduation services this past weekend.

But to me, if it was any team other than Florida, he would have said so by now. Maybe I’m wrong and he heads to Texas to sit behind Shane Buechele or maybe he gives up big-time football and heads to Harvard where he knows he can start. Or perhaps he heads to Wisconsin, the best option of the bunch to me when it comes to the combination of big-time football and a chance to start, and tries to become the next Russell Wilson. But this delay sure seems to point in the direction of the Gators, who would love to have Zaire in the starting mix. I guess time will tell as this is the decision that seems to never arrive.