Alex Golesh not setting 'number' for Auburn football's 2027 recruiting class
· Yahoo Sports
TAMPA, Fla. — Since becoming Auburn football's head coach, Alex Golesh has described the program's circumstance on the recruiting trail as a matter of catching up.
He and his staff had mere days to cobble together Auburn's 2026 signing class, which ranked 31st nationally and 12th in the SEC, according to 247Sports' team rankings.
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"We've had to make up a lot of ground in recruiting," Golesh said Tuesday, July 21, at SEC Media Days. "That was such a huge, huge point of emphasis from the moment I got there. I told our staff right away, we're a year behind."
With Golesh's first season at Auburn nearly a month away, the outlook for the 2027 recruiting cycle looks far more favorable. The program boasts a top-10 class nationally, and it's top-five in the conference, in front of several powers like Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee.
A 25-prospect bunch, 15 of those commitments are rated as four-star prospects or better. It's a class that already looks readymade for signing day, but is Golesh putting a set number on how many signees he wants to have?
"I don't know if there's truly a number," he said. "The whole roster management part right now is so — maybe the word would be crazy? Simply because there's going to be a handful of guys that get a fifth year that we didn't know had a fifth year, whether they take the fifth year or not. So, the number is so in flux, and I don't know that we would ever turn down a really, really good player, but I really like where we're at in terms of, we filled every need we had, and we're really, really excited."
Of the more than two dozen high-schoolers committed to Auburn's class, seven of them are considered top-200 players nationally, and four are top-10 players nationally. Four of them are also top-10 players in the state of Alabama.
To Golesh, none of that's reason to celebrate, at least not right now.
"Signing day is in December, so we've got to go have success on the field to be able to validate what we've been selling and preaching, but I'm really excited with where we are," he said. "We're not going to turn down a good player, though."
Adam Cole is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at [email protected] or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @colereporter.To support Adam's work, please subscribe to the Montgomery Advertiser.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Alex Golesh not setting 'number' for Auburn football's 2027 recruiting class