• Hildebrand is ranked as the No. 13 overall offensive tackle in the nation for the 2027 class by 247Sports.
• Arizona State, Miami, Alabama, Texas A&M and USC are among his current favorites.
• The 6-foot-6 left tackle has started every varsity game since his freshman year at Chandler Basha.

Chandler Basha left tackle Jake Hildebrand, the state’s No. 1 2027 college football prospect, said Arizona State and Miami are among the top potential schools on his recently revealed 10-best list.

Miami is playing in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl as part of the College Football Playoff semifinal against Ole Miss at State Farm Stadium in Glendale on Jan. 8.

Hildebrand, 6-foot-6, 293 pounds, has started every varsity game since his freshman year and helped lead the Bears to the Open Division state title this past season. He won’t be able to attend the Fiesta Bowl because he’s in San Antonio, getting ready to play in the Jan. 10 Navy All-American Bowl. The game airs at 11 a.m. MST on NBC.

Hildebrand also has CFP semifinalists Indiana and Oregon, along with Texas A&M, Alabama, USC, Ohio State and Texas among his top 10 colleges.

“A few schools that are my favorite from the top 10 are ASU, Alabama, Texas A&M, Miami and USC,” Hildebrand said in a direct message to The Arizona Republic. “They have definitely been the schools that have been contacting me the most and built the best relationship with.”

There is no timetable for when Hildebrand will commit. He could wait until he makes trips this spring, summer and fall. But he is among the most coveted left tackles in the country, who has 38 offers, according to 247Sports.

The 247Sports Composite has Hildebrand ranked as the No. 13 overall offensive tackle in the country in the 2027 class. He is ranked No. 1 in the class of 2027 by The Republic.

Richard Obert has been covering high school sports since the 1980s for The Arizona Republic. Catch the best high school sports coverage in the state. Sign up for Azcentral Preps Now. And be sure to subscribe to our daily sports newsletters so you don’t miss a thing. To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert at richard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter:@azc_obert

California will lose $160 million for delaying the revocations of 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses for immigrants, federal transportation officials announced Wednesday.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy already withheld $40 million in federal funding because he said California isn’t enforcing English proficiency requirements for truckers.

The state notified these drivers in the fall that they would lose their licenses after a federal audit found problems that included licenses for truckers and bus drivers that remained valid long after an immigrant’s visa expired. Some licenses were also given to citizens of Mexico and Canada who don’t qualify. More than one-quarter of the small sample of California licenses that investigators reviewed were unlawful.

But then last week California said it would delay those revocations until March after immigrant groups sued the state because of concerns that some groups were being unfairly targeted. Duffy said the state was supposed to revoke those licenses by Monday.

Duffy is pressuring California and other states to make sure immigrants who are in the country illegally aren’t granted the licenses.

“Our demands were simple: follow the rules, revoke the unlawfully-issued licenses to dangerous foreign drivers, and fix the system so this never happens again,” Duffy said in a written statement. “(Gov.) Gavin Newsom has failed to do so — putting the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of the American people.”

Newsom’s office did not immediately respond after the action was announced Wednesday afternoon.

After Duffy objected to the delay in revocations, Newsom posted on X that the state believed federal officials were open to a delay after a meeting on Dec. 18. But in the official letter the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sent Wednesday, federal officials said they never agreed to the delay and still expected the 17,000 licenses to be revoked by this week.

Enforcement ramped up after fatal crashes

The federal government began cracking down during the summer. The issue became prominent after a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people in August.

Duffy previously threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New York, Texas, South Dakota, Colorado, and Washington after audits found significant problems under the existing rules, including commercial licenses being valid long after an immigrant truck driver’s work permit expired. He had dropped the threat to withhold nearly $160 million from California after the state said it would revoke the licenses.

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek Barrs said California failed to live up to the promise it made in November to revoke all the flawed licenses by Jan. 5. The agency said the state also unilaterally decide to delay until March the cancellations of roughly 4,700 additional unlawful licenses that were discovered after the initial ones were found.

“We will not accept a corrective plan that knowingly leaves thousands of drivers holding noncompliant licenses behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks in open defiance of federal safety regulations,” Barrs said.

Industry praises the enforcement

Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers who shouldn’t have licenses or can’t speak English off the road. They also applauded the Transportation Department’s moves to go after questionable commercial driver’s license schools.

“For too long, loopholes in this program have allowed unqualified drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the motoring public at risk,” said Todd Spencer, president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association.

The spotlight has been on Sikh truckers because the driver in the Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash in California in October are both Sikhs. So the Sikh Coalition, a national group defending the civil rights of Sikhs, and the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the California drivers. They said immigrant truck drivers were being unfairly targeted.

Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses immigrants can receive only represent about 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses or about 200,000 drivers. The Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court put the new rules on hold.