Tag: Pac-12 Recruiting

Which Pac-12 school has dominated the recruiting world most since 2010?

When it comes to recruiting in the Pac-12, USC has dominated the past 15 years. The race for second place is incredibly tight, though.

When you look at the history of college football out on the west coast, several different eras have come and gone throughout the years. From the days back in the Pac-8, the Pac-10, or the Pac-12, there are a handful of teams who have had their day in the sun, with schools like USC, Washington, Oregon, UCLA, and Utah all largely staying near the top of the rankings for the most part.

The same can largely be said when we get to the topic of recruiting. If you look at the history of the conference as a whole, there has been no school more dominant than the USC Trojans when it comes to signing and developing top-rated talent. While most schools are lucky to have had a dozen 5-star players to sign with their team, the Trojans boast a number greater than 60. Going back decades, USC is in a class of its own when it comes to recruiting.

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But is that still the case when you narrow the scope of things and look at more recent history? The Ducks can’t boast historical recruiting numbers like USC, but since 2010, can Oregon hold a candle to the Trojans when it comes to top-rated commitments?

That’s a question that we wanted to find out. Last week, I looked at the top 50 rated recruits in the Pac-12 since the year 2010, trying to figure out if it could tell us anything about ratings, and how well they can predict future success.

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Now I want to look at the top 100 recruits during that timeframe and try to see which Pac-12 team has been the most successful at landing elite talent over the last decade.

To do this, I ranked the top 100 Pac-12 recruits since 2010 and found how many top 50 players and top 100 players each team landed.

Here’s what I found:

Identifying the 50 best recruits in the Pac-12 over the past decade

Some of the biggest current NFL stars hailed from the Pac-12. We broke down the top 50 recruits to come through the Pac-12 since 2010.

When you talk about recruiting in the world of college football, the SEC obviously comes to mind first. Over the years, they’ve stacked the top talent in the world, year after year, and produced some of the best NFL players in the history of the sport.

The Pac-12 isn’t too far behind, though. When going through the top recruits that each team has signed in their history, some of the most notable names in the game have come from Pac-12 schools, whether it be John Elway, Dan Fouts, Aaron Rodgers, Keenan Allen, Robert Woods, Shaq Thompson or Kayvon Thibodeaux.

We wanted to dive into the archives and see who the greatest recruits in Pac-12 history were. At the start of this research project, we initially combed through the top recruits that every team had signed and tried to put them in order. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the USC Trojans were going to break the game. While most schools had a handful or a dozen of five-star players to account for in the history of their programs, the Trojans had over 60 signed to play in LA over their history.

If we did the top 50 recruits of all time in the Pac-12, it would end up being a list of 45 USC players, and maybe five other players from Oregon, UCLA or Cal. Nobody wants to read that list, save for our friends at Trojans Wire.

So to make it a bit more appealing, we restricted the window to the past decade and change, looking to 2010 for our start date. Parsing the top-rated players since then, we get a nice list of guys who have come through the Conference of Champions, painting a clear picture of which schools have best dominated the recruiting space out west in the latest era of college football.

Here are the top 50 Pac-12 recruits of the past decade.

New Pac-12 team jumps into No. 2 spot for 2024 conference recruiting rankings

The Pac-12 has a new hot team that’s joined the Ducks near the top of the rankings, fighting for a top-10 spot nationally.

Over the past decade or so, the Oregon Ducks have been a mainstay near the top of the recruiting rankings in the Pac-12 conference. If they didn’t hold the number 1 spot, you didn’t have to look very far down the ranks before you saw the Ducks.

That remains the case in 2024. Though the USC Trojans got a late commitment in the class of 2023 to take the final No. 1 spot in the conference rankings, the Ducks have gotten out to a blazing hot start in the 2024 class, where they now rank No. 7 nationally.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Dan Lanning is continuing to recruit at a great clip. However, one thing that has surprised us so far is how successful Troy Taylor has been in his first cycle as the Stanford Cardinal head coach.

Stanford has picked up a handful of blue-chip players over the last couple of weeks, and they are now in the thick of the race for the top spot out west, as well as a top-10 spot in the national rankings.

Take a look at the latest Pac-12 recruiting rankings midway through the month of June:

Noteworthy details from 2023 Pac-12 football recruiting rankings

Did #USC eclipse Oregon? Does it matter? Let’s identify the important aspects of the 2023 #Pac12 recruiting rankings.

If you consult the Class of 2023 college football recruiting rankings, you’ll be able to identify where the various Pac-12 schools land in the hierarchy.

Some recruiting services have Oregon ranked No. 8 and USC No. 9, while others flip-flop that ranking order and put USC in eighth place, beating out the Ducks for first in the Pac-12.

It is obviously not a matter of earth-shaking importance whether USC or Oregon is 8 or 9 and the other is one spot lower (or higher). What really matters is that both programs have finished in the top 10 and have set a high standard.

What else can we glean from the Pac-12’s various team rankings? Let’s take a look:

Ranking the 20 best recruits to sign in the Pac-12 during 2023 cycle

Which Pac-12 school had the most top-20 recruits in the conference? To no one’s surprise, two teams dominated the rankings.

The Pac-12 not only saw a nice resurgence on the football field this past year, ranking as one of the best conferences in the nation with a tie for the most teams in the top 25 rankings at the end of the year, but they also saw a nice year in the recruiting world as well.

With the 2023 cycle now behind us, we can sit back and assess how each school did, and how each conference did. While every coach has his own knack for developing talent, and one team may do more with less than another, one of the easiest ways to judge talent is by looking at recruiting stars and rankings.

Of course, the SEC dominates in the recruiting world, continually stacking to national rankings with double-digit 5-star prospects staying in the south. However, behind them, the Pac-12 made a nice push in 2023, rivaling the Big-12 (7) for the next highest number of 5-star players (5).

So who made up those 5-stars in the Pac-12, and what other players went down as the highest-rated recruits in the conference during this cycle? Here’s a look at the top 20 guys who signed out west in the 2023 cycle.

Final Pac-12 recruiting rankings for 2023 cycle

For the fifth straight season, the Ducks are at the top of the Pac-12 recruiting rankings looking down.

For the fifth straight season, the Oregon Ducks have maintained their spot atop the Pac-12 Conference when it comes to recruiting.

While there have been coaching changes across the league, the Ducks have consistently been better than the rest when it comes to acquiring talent and bringing it to Eugene. Whether it’s national recruiting with players from Texas or Florida or local recruiting from the USC Trojans’ backyard in Los Angeles, there are few players the Ducks have been unable to get over the past several years if they want them.

Wednesday was another great day for Dan Lanning and the Ducks, with the addition of four-star cornerback Rodrick Pleasant on signing day, who chose Oregon over USC. This solidified the Ducks’ spot atop the conference recruiting rankings once again. Here’s how the full rankings shook out in 2023.

Who are the top-rated recruiters in the Pac-12 for 2023 cycle?

We talk a lot about top-ranked recruits in college football, but rarely about top-ranked recruiters. Let’s change that.

A major allotment of time in college football is spent on recruiting, especially in the offseason. While teams work hard to break down film and build relationships with players, attempting to get them to join their teams, fans spend a vast amount of time diving deep into the ranks of high school prospects, imagining what life could be like if some of those 5-star and 4-star prospects chose to move to their city and play football.

I’d say a majority of fans’ time spent thinking about recruiting is directed toward the players, and not nearly enough time is spent thinking about the actual recruiters.

We wanted to change that.

While we’ve dove into the top players in the class, and where the top teams stand in the national rankings, today we wanted to look at the top recruiters; the guys who are the best at selling their school and building the relationships necessary to create winning football programs and develop upcoming talent.

The 2023 recruiting cycle is not done yet, of course. We just watched the early signing period come and go, where the Oregon Ducks were among the most entertaining teams in the nation, flipping three players and signing a pair of 5-stars. There are likely to be more commitments down the road in the late signing period as well. How did the Ducks find such success? It may be because they have elite recruiters on the staff.

Here are the Pac-12 recruiter rankings after the early 2023 signing period:

Every Pac-12 team’s top-ranked recruits in the 2023 class

We know how the recruiting rankings look in the Pac-12, but do you know which players make up those rankings? A look at each school’s top commits.

With just about a week left until the early signing period begins in college football, we continue to look at the landscape in the Pac-12 conference and how the teams stack up when it comes to potential incoming players.

Earlier in the week, we looked at the standings in the Pac-12 recruiting rankings, with the Oregon Ducks barely edging the USC Trojans for the top spot. There is still a lot left to happen before the end of the cycle, so we plan to check back into these rankings after the early signing period closes and as national signing day approaches in February.

To get another look at the recruiting classes out west, we wanted to take a glimpse at individual players for each team, highlighting the top three recruits for each Pac-12 school ahead at this point in the recruiting cycle.

Here are the top hauls for the schools out west.

Note: Some of the recruiting rankings have changed since our initial article about Pac-12 standings. The following team rankings are updated.

How the 2023 Pac-12 recruiting rankings shake out before early signing period

We’re getting into the stretch run of recruiting before the early signing period. Will these Pac-12 rankings change when all is said and done?

We are just over a week away from the early signing period getting off to a start in the college football world, which means that the next several days will be spent with coaches around the nation frantically visiting recruits and doing their best to shore up commitments and but a stamp on their teams’ future.

A lot of recruits will also be making visits, which is something that we saw take place in Eugene over the weekend, and something we will continue to see this coming weekend was well.

As we get into the brunt of the recruiting season, we wanted to take a quick look at where things currently stand when it comes to the recruiting hierarchy in the Pac-12. Who holds the belt for the No. 1 spot in the rankings out west, and who will hold the belt after the signing period has passed? Will there be any late flips that change things? Will one fanbase be upset when all is said and done?

We can’t know for sure until December 21 comes, but for now, here’s where things stand going into the stretch run of recruiting season.

USC 2023 target R.J. Jones is the X-factor for Bosco against Mater Dei

.@DonJamesSports examines some of the key players who will decide the outcome of the 1-vs-2 Bosco-Mater Dei main event.

There are many USC-related storylines in the upcoming high school showdown between St. John Bosco and Mater Dei. R.J. Jones is connected to a few of them.

R.J. Jones is a 6-foot-1, 193-pound free safety from Mission Hills, Calif., who starts in the secondary of the No. 1 high school team in the nation, St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Calif.).

He has offers from USC, Oregon, Louisville, Arkansas, Washington, BYU, and UCLA. He was previously committed to play with Cal, but he changed his decision on August 18 before the season started.

According to On.3Sports, the USC Trojans are at the top of his list.

He stated that Cal is still very much in consideration for his final decision, and mentioned USC, UCLA, Washington, Oregon State, and Louisville as programs that have been the most active in his recruitment.

“The culture there I would say that they’ve built since before I was even born has never changed,” he said of the Trojans. “Donte Williams, he’s been recruiting me since my freshman year when he was back at Oregon. Him being from the LA area — he’s a real close guy, he’s a real cool guy and I love love Donte.”

Jones plays as a free safety for the Bosco Braves. In their defensive scheme this primarily places him as the single-high safety responsible for locking down the deep middle of the field.

Jones is currently ranked as the No. 90 prospect in the country for the class of 2023, according to @247Sports 

Look for the strong safety next to Jones, Ty Lee — who has over 22 offers including UCLA and Louisville — to also be a central key to beating Mater Dei Friday night in the highly anticipated No. 1 vs No. 2 matchup in the Santa Ana Bowl.

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