By Jeremy Crabtree, Rivals.com National Analyst and Editor
The 2007 National Letter of Intent Day is coming up soon, but Rivals.com is already looking ahead to the gridiron prep stars of the future. Our experts have broken down the situational film and the clinical data and they all have one thing to say: a Clausen will still be the king of high school football… in 2026.
In fact, because the Class of ’26 is nineteen years away the only viable candidates we’ve found so far turn out to be the 290 million spermatozoa of Jim Clausen, father of football stars Rick, Casey and Jimmy. The first two played for the Tennessee Volunteers, and Jimmy has already garnered Heisman buzz from other Clausen family members before he’s even taken a snap for the University of Notre Dame.
One of the estimated 290 million Clausen spermatozoa Rivals.com has picked to be the top recruit of 2026.
All three older brothers have already gone on record saying the youngest “could be better than all of us put together, so long as we figure out which one’s gonna fertilize mom’s egg.”
“That,” said Rivals.com West Analyst Greg Biggins, “may be the biggest question of all: which one is it going to be? Nature’s most primal crucible will be the testing ground for 2026’s top rated prep football player named Clausen. It’s a tough question. Neither reproductive science nor recruiting can be one hundred percent exact, so all we have now are educated guesses.”
Though there hasn’t been enough film to conclude which Y chromosome mechanism will win the job, Biggins and a lot of recruiting experts and coaching staffs around the nation believe that, collectively, the Clausen spermatozoa have tremendous upside.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that whichever of the almost three hundred million Clausens swimming in Jim’s testes makes it through to Mrs. Clausen’s ovum is going to be the greatest football player ever,” Biggins said.
For this reason many are watching the Thousand Oaks based family and their swarms of prospects very closely. At an average of 36 hours old the Clausen spermatozoa are the youngest in a family of football stars, but that hasn’t stopped some from raving about their collective technique.
“I’ve seen a lot of film in my day, but nothing like these spermatozoa. They can make every kind of flagellation you’d want: the ten millimeter out, the deep fade, the ability to get out of the seminal vesicle and evade hostile leukocytes. They’re real athletes, not a bunch of system players” said Rivals.com National Analyst Mike Farrell.
Praise like that leads many to believe the Clausen spermatozoa are ready to make that crucial jump from the seminiferous tubules of the male reproductive system to the vaginal canal of the host female, where speed and physicality are issues the vast majority of young sperm cells are unable to deal with. Early access to the ovum seems to be a key for the football player who will eventually vie for early playing time at a lucky Division I-A university somewhere, and that means the ability to read defenses at both the microscopic and collegiate levels.
“We know this much: whichever one of those haploid gametes makes it through is going to be the best of the best. Those CIF [California Interscholastic Federation] records might as well have a spot reserved at the top for him. Them. Whatever,” Farrell said.
While there have been some rumors of the spermatozoa transferring to either Jim Clausen’s secretary or fellow Ventura County football powerhouse St. Bonaventure, most experts expect the nascent superstars to stay right at home.
As for an early leader for the spermatozoa’s services? NCAA recruiting rules forbid schools from establishing contact so early on in the process but that hasn’t stopped the speculation. Most assume heavy hitters like Florida, USC, Michigan, Tennessee, Texas and Miami will be in the mix, but don’t be surprised if the eventual champion of Jim Clausen’s 290 million sperm cells goes with a completely different pick.
As the father himself said, “there’s millions of those boys. Who knows what they’re gonna be like, except for the laser right arm and downfield vision?”
Stay tuned to Rivals.com for the next nineteen years as we follow these developments.
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Much thanks to Losers with Socks for the picture as well as the idea that eventually lead to this post. Stay tuned to LSW for more straight shootin’, flagellatin’ recruitin’ talk in the coming weeks. Err, coming nineteen years.
82 Sluggo Win 
that picture is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
Also Jimmy is gonna eat USC’s soul for four years, haunting them for the rest of their gang-banging lives, just thought I’d share that.
And just like the first three quarterbacks, all the spermatozoa will go bald by the time they’re 25.
BD, you do realize that if Clausen starts he’ll do so on one of the worst Notre Dame teams in the past decade? Which is saying a lot.
At least he’s a pro at the comb over for the after game presser on why he led his team to their first loss to Navy since Roger Staubach was playing for the Midshipmen.