FSU football: Will the Noles land five-star KJ Bolden?

FSU football has the No. 6 recruiting class nationally, by far the highest-ranking this late in the recruiting cycle in the Mike Norvell era.

The Noles have two five-star commitments with Landen Thomas and Charles Lester III. The latter is the first five-star defensive back since Levonta Taylor in the 2016 recruiting cycle. FSU, a.k.a, “DBU,” has a rich history with the defensive back position.

FSU will look to add to that, hopefully, Saturday night when five-star athlete KJ Bolden announces his commitment. Bolden lists as an athlete, but FSU and most others recruit him as a safety. His final five schools were Alabama, Auburn, FSU, Georgia, and Ohio State.

He has taken official visits to Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State. Normally, that favors one of those schools, but Bolden has visited FSU a few times this spring for multiple day visits. He also visited Auburn this spring, and they got the final one last week, but I don’t buy the narrative that came out of that visit.

I don’t think they could make up that much ground that quickly. I know Hugh Freeze does Huge Freeze things, and has apparently been doing them on the recruiting trail lately. I wrote the other day. I think it’s between Georgia and FSU.

The thought early on has always been it’s the in-state school Georgia. I’ve been following recruiting a long time, and following the visits has always been a solid rule to judge which schools to favor. He’s been to Georgia a million times, as it’s only an hour from his home outside of Atlanta.

He has two high school teammates committed to Georgia(though one just transferred there recently). One is 2025 five-star linebacker Jadon Perlotte, who has said he’ll go wherever Bolden commits. Perlotte has been on FSU’s campus twice this spring, and posted a cryptic social media message related to FSU that has since deleted a few days ago.

Then we have Mike Norvell’s post on the site formerly known as Twitter as August began, hinting at more recruiting fireworks, which is something he never did until right before July. FSU got 10 commitments, including five-star Charles Lester III, who has been recruiting Bolden hard to FSU.

Top 100 players and FSU commits, Kameron Davis and quarterback Luke Kromenhoek have been recruiting him hard to FSU. Both players are from Georgia. FSU already beat Georgia head’s up for the No. 1 tight-end in the nation, Landen Thomas.

I know almost everything favoring FSU is anecdotal. Maybe I’m just trying to will it into existence because I know how much it would impact FSU.

However, I think FSU can pull it off Saturday night. They have a ton of momentum on the recruiting trail, and clearly the program is trending in the right direction under Mike Norvell. If FSU football lands Bolden, they’ll move to No. 4 nationally in the recruiting rankings.