College football signing day 2024 - Winners, questions, takeaways - ESPN

College football's early signing period opened Wednesday and saw plenty of fireworks pop off across the 2025 class, leaving a handful programs riding a signing day high and many more licking their wounds.

Wednesday's obvious winner: The Oregon Ducks, who vaulted to No. 2 in ESPN's class rankings with a flurry of commitments, including the flip of the top defender in the 2025 cycle. With 16 ESPN 300 commits, the Ducks are right on the tails of Georgia for the top spot among the best classes in 2025.

Meanwhile, another Big Ten team joined a pair of top ACC programs that stumbled, losing key pledges and dropping in ESPN's class rankings in disappointing fashion.

Here's a look at the winners, the programs who missed out Wednesday and the questions that still loom over the 2025 cycle after more than 12 months of recruiting played out in the span of 12 hours:

Jump to a section:
Biggest winners from the early signing period
Schools that have issues to figure out
Three big remaining questions

No program had a better early signing period than Dan Lanning and the Ducks. And no moment on Day 1 of the signing window was bigger than five-star cornerback Na'eem Offord's flip from Ohio State to Oregon.

Offord is ESPN's No. 4 overall prospect and the nation's No. 1 defender, and the Ducks made a statement in swiping him from the Big Ten rival Buckeyes after Offord spent nine months committed to Ohio State. He's now the second-ranked member of Oregon's incoming class.

But Offord wasn't the only big move for Lanning & Co. The commitment of four-star defensive end Tobi Haastrup pads the Ducks' defensive class, and Oregon bolstered its quarterback room by flipping Cal pledge Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, who joins four-star passer Akili Smith Jr.