If Lawrence North 5-star WR Monshun Sales – who committed to Indiana on The Pat McAfee Show on Friday – eventually signs with the Hoosiers in December, he will be the first 5-star recruit to sign with Indiana in program history. The 6-foot-5 wideout is rated by the industry as the No. 8 recruit in the 2027 class and by 247Sports as the No. 1 WR in the class.
The lists that Indiana has found itself on in the past two years have been astonishing. Sales’ final schools list was just the latest, as Indiana beat out Alabama, Ohio State, Texas, and LSU to earn his commitment.
While he hasn’t officially signed yet, this was the logical path for Indiana to achieve this recruiting breakthrough. Indiana’s incredible rise through the college football ranks would surely lead to major in-state recruiting dividends, as programs like Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Michigan had, for so long, parachuted into the state and plucked away the most promising talent. It would also most likely eventually lead to a 5-star prospect buying into the idea that Indiana Football could maintain relevance long-term, even with Juju Lewis choosing Colorado in the 2025 class. And, given the recent pipeline to Bloomington during the 2020s, it would be most fitting if that confluence came in the form of a Lawrence North WR, after Donaven McCulley (2021), Omar Cooper (2022), and Davion Chandler (2025) signed with the Hoosiers out of high school.
Perhaps this obvious gateway is what had folks (like me) suspicious all the way up until Sales unveiled his Indiana Homefield Apparel gear on TV.
That, and this is so far outside of any space Indiana had recruited within in program history. The chart below seeks to place Sales’ commitment into the context of Indiana’s 17 most recent recruiting classes.
Sales is one of seven statistical outliers at the upper bound of Indiana’s recruiting classes during this stretch, but, even with the strength of the current 2027 class, he is still the greatest outlier. That is how promising he is as a high school prospect.
But there are many more takeaways from this chart:
There is a visible signal of Curt Cignetti’s standard. Aside from the lower bound outlier in 2026 (OL CJ Scifres), Cignetti has not signed anyone to a full recruiting class who was rated below Indiana’s 17-year average rating (84.3). This is notable because the visible trend for the strongest classes in this stretch was to raise the floor.
Indiana had been stabilizing as a program beginning near the end of Kevin Wilson’s tenure. The distributions of recruiting ratings in the classes began to shrink around 2014 and 2015, before Wilson’s departure. And throughout Tom Allen’s tenure, the ceilings were pushed upward as well (see the increase in the third quartile – top of the box – of the classes beginning in 2020).
This has been discussed in BSB before, but the beginning of the true transfer portal era (2021) really hurt the Hoosiers. For example, the top-rated recruits from 2019 to 2023 – a range that featured nearly all of Allen’s greatest recruiting momentum – all transferred away from the program for various reasons. The portal (and a lack of development) hollowed out what the ratings deemed to be impressive classes.
Throughout the classes following the 2021 collapse, Allen somehow managed to keep the first quartile (bottom of the box) above Indiana’s average rating for this time period.
The only unrated recruit to sign with Indiana during the Curt Cignetti Era? Rolijah Hardy.
Ratings are not everything, but it is the best recruiting data point that exists for quality of signing classes, and what the chart above shows – the density of the classes, the outliers at the tops of the classes – is that Cignetti has quickly laid a foundation of stability after inheriting a “roster crisis” when he was hired in December 2023.
He’s done this via many points of strategy, but one of them is deciding who is worth the money. This is a very different recruiting environment than in 2011 (when the chart above began), and Indiana is a significantly larger player financially than it was just a few years ago. But Cignetti has proven, both in high school recruiting and in the portal, that he’s not one to reach. That means he’s not going to throw money at several 5-star recruits each class. This is actually a privilege for Indiana, as many large programs are expected to boast the best recruiting classes each year, which now means overpaying for potential that may not see the field immediately.
This evaluation and economic strategy brings to mind perhaps the most exciting point about Sales: Cignetti clearly believes Sales can see the field early and be effective.
There is still so much left unknown about Sales’ future with Indiana. How hard will the other suitors continue to push for Sales? Will he actually sign with the Hoosiers? What if Mike Shanahan accepts a job elsewhere after the 2026 or 2027 seasons?
But for now, it’s okay to dream a little bit while watching Sales’ HUDL film (see it here).
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