It's never good when a kid shamelessly calls a school his "dream school." Even if they have one, they usually save that shit for after they commit.
Yeah definitely seems to be a heavy USC lean at this point, but the one wildcard with these kinds of recruits is family, so at least us having Ariel might be on our side. The prospect of all 3 Ngata brothers sounded fun.
USC hasn't won a PAC title since 2008 ... I wouldn't call that dominant.
So they have one less title than number two and number three combined.
That's the definition of premier.
It's good marketing and perception ...
If you look at the total numbers it says SC is the power ...
If you look at conference titles by decade ... you get the illusion that SC is a power ...
But SC is working on a decade without a championship and has really only had 1 high end coach over that time period (Petey - who accounted for 7 of the 16 titles) ...
Let's extrapolate this out another 10 years here to 2024 (that's 8 more seasons) ... I'd be willing to bet that UW wins at least 4 of the 8 championships ... do you think Clay Helton is going to have a 4 in 10 year run in him? I don't. UW will continue to close the gap.
I get what SC is ... it's branded itself to the point that most buy the hype when they haven't done shit to earn it (see this offseason as Exhibit A). They will almost always be the first choice of most LA kids that are looking to stay local. That doesn't mean that they are the best choice.
Back up for a bit and realize that UW over the 42 year period basically had shit for HC from 1993 through 2013 ... we won (or had a share of) 2 conference titles in that time period. I think we all are in agreement that when UW has the right coach in place they are as dangerous as any program in the conference.
Compare SC's track record (previous post) to UW's over the same period:
It's not hard to see that we are every bit as capable as USC is ... WHEN we have the right coach in place. If anything, we're better positioned under Pete than we were even under Don James. And for as much fun as it is to clown some of the former coaches SC has had, only Ted Tollner and Paul Hackett qualify as absolute disasters. John Robinson (particularly the 1st time around) was at worst above average and Larry Smith was probably average (I'd say Clay Helton will be fortunate to get to this level). Lambo is the definition of average for us ... Slick's been proven to be largely below average ... Gilby was a disaster as a HC at both Cal and UW ... Tyrone was cashing checks ... and Sark was a drunk. Hard to get much worse of a 20 year run. Pete's turned that around ... as we continue to win at a high level, the perception of where UW stands in the pecking order of the West Coast will continually to change for the better.
Comments
Outside of Petey's run SC has been far from the premier program in the conference dating back to the 80s ...
If you want to say that SC is the program in the conference with the highest ceiling there's no questioning that ...
But the performance hasn't matched the luster for far too long
USC = 16
Washington = 9
UCLA = 8
Oregon = 7
Stanford = 5
Arizona St = 3
Cal = 2
Washington St = 2
Oregon St = 1
Arizona = 1
And USC's titles by time period:
1975 - 1984 = 4
1985 - 1994 = 4
1995 - 2004 = 4
2005 - 2014 = 4
2015 - Present = 0
USC hasn't won a PAC title since 2008 ... I wouldn't call that dominant.
That's the definition of premier.
If you look at the total numbers it says SC is the power ...
If you look at conference titles by decade ... you get the illusion that SC is a power ...
But SC is working on a decade without a championship and has really only had 1 high end coach over that time period (Petey - who accounted for 7 of the 16 titles) ...
Let's extrapolate this out another 10 years here to 2024 (that's 8 more seasons) ... I'd be willing to bet that UW wins at least 4 of the 8 championships ... do you think Clay Helton is going to have a 4 in 10 year run in him? I don't. UW will continue to close the gap.
I get what SC is ... it's branded itself to the point that most buy the hype when they haven't done shit to earn it (see this offseason as Exhibit A). They will almost always be the first choice of most LA kids that are looking to stay local. That doesn't mean that they are the best choice.
Back up for a bit and realize that UW over the 42 year period basically had shit for HC from 1993 through 2013 ... we won (or had a share of) 2 conference titles in that time period. I think we all are in agreement that when UW has the right coach in place they are as dangerous as any program in the conference.
Compare SC's track record (previous post) to UW's over the same period:
1975 - 1984 = 3
1985 - 1994 = 3
1995 - 2004 = 2
2005 - 2015 = 0
2015 - Present = 1
It's not hard to see that we are every bit as capable as USC is ... WHEN we have the right coach in place. If anything, we're better positioned under Pete than we were even under Don James. And for as much fun as it is to clown some of the former coaches SC has had, only Ted Tollner and Paul Hackett qualify as absolute disasters. John Robinson (particularly the 1st time around) was at worst above average and Larry Smith was probably average (I'd say Clay Helton will be fortunate to get to this level). Lambo is the definition of average for us ... Slick's been proven to be largely below average ... Gilby was a disaster as a HC at both Cal and UW ... Tyrone was cashing checks ... and Sark was a drunk. Hard to get much worse of a 20 year run. Pete's turned that around ... as we continue to win at a high level, the perception of where UW stands in the pecking order of the West Coast will continually to change for the better.