2019 Recruiting List A program can have a maximum number of scholarship recipients of 85, if some are partial. Since a large percentage redshirt at some point, those 85 scholarships have to be distributed over five years of recruits. That implies 17 freshmen per class plus whatever the attrition level is, as the sustainable number of NLI signees, assuming some are partial.
This is further reduced if walkons from prior years earn scholarships as is usually expected. If teams hand out a lot of scholarships to transfers it can be higher as those guys are soon gone.
So, bottom line, celebrating huge signing classes is misplaced. It’s better to bring in a moderate number of real quality guys.