New York » This much is certain at Florida: Doubts about Urban Meyer's future with the Gators didn't hurt their recruiting this year.

Florida landed the top-rated recruiting class in the country Wednesday, the first and by far the busiest day of the national letter of intent signing period for high school football players.

"The key to recruiting is a lot like the keys to making a great sale," said Meyer, who has won two national championships in five seasons with the Gators. "The first one is having a great product and we obviously have that here at the University of Florida."

As usual, national signing day was mostly about the rich getting richer.

While Florida took the mythical recruiting national championship -- all the notable ranking services had the Gators on top -- Alabama and Texas, the teams that played for the BCS title last month, also loaded up for future runs.

Southern California and Tennessee withstood late coaching changes to land highly regarded classes. And Auburn showed it's not about to concede the state of Alabama to Nick Saban and the Tide. But the big winner was Florida, a program that seemed on the verge of disarray six weeks ago.

A day after Christmas, Meyer resigned to deal with health problems. The next day he decided instead to take a leave of absence .

At the top of Florida's class is Ronald Powell, a 240-pound defensive end rated the No. 1 prospect in the country by Rivals.com.