Every year, the topic of recruiting rankings comes up, and the same schools across the nation start to brag about where they rank annually, while others tend to claim that rankings don’t matter, and lobby for the importance of coaching and development instead.
In the end, both play a massive role in success. While some of the top players in the nation can struggle to reach their ceiling without proper coaching, even the best teachers in the nation may not reach the pinnacle of success without the most talented players to work with.
In the Pac-12, the Oregon Ducks have largely reigned supreme over the past decade when it came to recruiting rankings in the conference, though teams like USC and Washington have given respectable efforts over the years as well. Rather than look at recruiting rankings in the conference over the years, we wanted to take a step back and look at some of the top recruits that have played out west.
Which team has had the single best player or the single highest-rated recruit sign with their squad in the past 25 years?
We dug into the history books to find out.