Almost always. Harbaugh's first one was ranked pretty high (player rankings). It was very small (13 maybe?) - too small to rank really high with the others. He probably had 6-8 4* players though.
well that first class of his when he had like a month on the job to recruit was ranked 37th nationally, 5th in the B1G, and it had 14 commits.
6 of the commits were 4*'s, the other 8 commits were 3*'s. Of those six 4* commits, two Jim actually signed, Zach Gentry and Tyrone Wheatley. The other 4 were Brady Hoke commits that Jim convinced to stay on board. All the other highly ranked Brady Hoke commits like 5* WR George Campbell, 5* RB Damien Harris and 4* RB Mike Weber jumped ship.
In that 14 person class, 5 have left the program and one is going to try to come back in 2018 from a devastating injury, but it's 50/50 at this point. All depends on how it goes this spring. Which again, shows why quantity is also very important.
the 5 who left:
ATH Brian Cole - top 50 rated player nationally. highly talented athlete, couldn't keep his head on straight, got kicked out of school.
QB Alex Malzone - in all honestly probably should have never been ranked a 4*. Lacked the size and arm talent to play at a high level in FBS.
DE Shelton Johnson - 3* from FL that got booted, rumors are the ganja
CB Keith Washington - 3* from Alabama that was buried on the depth chart, transferred to JUCO then to WVU
K Andrew David - transferred to TCU
Then you have Grant Newsome who is basically 50/50 at this point if he'll play again. Could be looking at 6 guys gone out of a 14 man class. Wouldn't be surprised either if you saw a couple more from that class transfer before the start of 2018, because Nolan Ulizio and Rueben Jones have both basically proven themselves not capable of playing at this level and have been recruited over.
