The Ohio State Buckeyes are a long-established Big Ten college football program. Next year, USC will become a brand-new Big Ten program. One of the more interesting aspects of 2024 college football recruiting is how new conference affiliations affect (if at all) the choices recruits make.
Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa’s choice of Notre Dame over Ohio State and USC is newsworthy in and of itself, but the new shape of the Big Ten is part of the subtext.
In the past, a USC-Ohio State-Notre Dame recruiting battle would have meant that Viliamu-Asa was choosing among three conference affiliations: Pac-12, Big Ten, and independent. Relative to the 2024 cycle and the 2024 college football season, a USC-OSU-ND choice is a choice involving two Big Ten schools and Notre Dame.
KVA chose the one school not attached to the Big Ten.
None of this means KVA chose Notre Dame because they weren’t part of the Big Ten, but let’s acknowledge the point that if two schools in the same conference recruit a player, and there’s a third option outside that conference, going to that third school saves the player from picking one conference team over another.
Did the discomfort of playing on one side of a USC-Ohio State Big Ten game affect KVA’s calculus? We might never fully know, but it’s certainly an interesting question to think about in the wake of Sunday’s decision.
[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=696092235]