If you were to separate P5 schools into 3 categories...
Flying first class
Flying coach
Riding Greyhound bus
Which PAC 12 schools are which?
If you're a 4 or 5 star recruit and SC is a mess, that's one less First class ticket in the PAC 12. So when other schools from across the country show up, you'll listen.
Until the PAC 12 as a whole does a better job of providing a first class football experience across the entire conference, kids are gonna leave for schools that do.
Imagine being a 4 star recruit and you take a trip to UCLA. Empty seats, they get beat, not a lot of energy or buzz. The next weekend you take a trip to Oklahoma. The following weekend you take a trip to Cal. The following weekend you take a trip to Clemson. If you're open to leaving home for school, UCLA and Cal aren't gonna be in the conversation at all. You saw packed stadiums, rowdy crowds, big time football, they rolled out the red carpet for you at OU and Clemson. It isn't the same experience at all.
The PAC 12 needs to get better as a whole if they want the West Coast talent to stay home
Good points, but here's a spoiler alert: LA almost certainly never will match SEC schools in atmosphere. Sure as hell not UCLA. Maybe USC if it get a huge, name-brand coach and goes on another Carroll-like run, but even then, it's not like the SEC. The stadium still is 2/3 empty at kickoff even if the team is in the top 5, and half of the student section doesn't even seem to know what football is.
More generally, I can't put hard data on this, since maybe it was like this back in the day more than I think, but it seems like recruiting is becoming more national and more about the "prestigious" programs and the better-positioned conferences than ever. This owes to the following factors, among others:
- Increasing focus on making it to the NFL due to NFL pay and endorsement money continuing to outpace inflation. This plays out through an increasing focus on scheme(s) getting play in the NFL, examples of, and hard numbers on, that institution getting players to the NFL, better facilities and equipment that purportedly will serve that goal, etc. Seems like more recruits are viewing their college choice as a business decision, and if that means a California kid has to go play in the SEC or Big Ten to have a better shot at the NFL, that increasingly is viewed as worth the trade-off vs. staying closer to home.
- More focus on life after football, which generally plays out as an increased focus on academic reputation, alumni networks, promises of jobs after graduation, etc.
- Even more of a focus on picking a school that will impress the recruit's buddies, owing to social media and the nature of today's recruit.
- Increased information available to recruits about all of this stuff if they or their families want it. They no longer are just being told stuff by coaches and their immediate circle. Tons of info is out there to be obtained relatively easily on all kinds of things. I'd be all over it if I had a kid who was a D-1 type of talent.
- Increased influence on recruiting, relating to all of the above, from people on social media and message boards, and in the media. E.g., boosters can contact recruits instantly and tell them whatever they want with pretty much zero consequences unless something egregious happens and is publicized. As for the media, a recruit's dad can just read Wilner's stuff to read about how a ton of money is going to the SEC and Big Ten relative to the Pac-12, how the Pac-12 is getting owned in terms of media revenues, etc.
- Ease of recruits and their coaches getting film out there and to contact staffs (e.g., with Hudl, on Twitter, etc.) ... there are much fewer "hidden gems" today.
Don't get me wrong ... in some ways, this is the same way it has been forever. I believe the factors above are increasing in significance, though, and/or are products of the age we're in, and it all adds up to recruiting becoming more national in nature and less regional, and a situation overall in which recruits and their families seem even more likely to be inclined to go with "big" programs unless their particular recruiting situation makes them think going in a different direction makes it more likely that they could make it to the NFL.
