There's a New No. 1 Overall Recruit in College Football
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With the college football season winding down, the anticipation for next month’s early signing day is only ramping up.
While a five-star rating doesn’t automatically make a recruit a bona fide star and a three-star rating doesn’t mean that a player recruit can’t blossom into a Heisman winner, the rankings as a whole do matter. Dating back to 2011, every team that has won a college football championship has done so with at least 52% of its roster composed of “blue-chip” recruits, aka four and five-stars.
On Wednesday, 247Sports updated its rankings for the 2026 class, and reported that 54 new recruits jumped into the Top247. The updated rankings also saw a different recruit leap into the No. 1 overall spot.
As revealed in the updated rankings, five-star quarterback and Houston Cougars commit Keisean Henderson jumped from the No. 2 spot to the No. 1 spot. The former wide receiver turned quarterback commanded plenty of praise from 247’s Director of Scouting for Andrew Ivins, who raved about his improvement.
“In his marquee matchups at Spring (Texas) Legacy the School of Sports Sciences this fall, Henderson was simply the X factor as he attacked coverage and took risks that few others his age are willing to take,” Ivins wrote. “There were certainly some misfires, but the numbers — and the game tape — speak for themselves.”
“Henderson’s completion percentage went from 59.8% as a junior to 74.5% as a senior,” Ivins added. “He made significant strides with his deep ball, as evident by his yards per attempt (8.26 to 12.67), and nearly doubled his touchdown-to-interception ratio (23:6 to 45:6) in the same amount of games.”
Henderson surpassed Georgia commit Jared Curtis as both the top recruit and quarterback, with Curtis falling to No. 3. Assuming Henderson doesn’t change his mind on attending Houston, he will be the highest-ranked recruit in program history, surpassing Buffalo Bills defensive tackle Ed Oliver.
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This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Nov 20, 2025, where it first appeared in the College Football section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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