Once again, USC proved that it doesn’t have much of a functioning defense. And that incapacity has disheartened the offense. Caleb Williams and company had a bad day from the offensive line with the sacks to the receivers with the dropped passes to the running backs with a total of 3 yards rushing. Losing is a downer and the team is beaten. It shows.
The team has quality players, by all accounts, but maybe not enough of them. Yes, poor alignments, delinquent adjustments and strategy, poor coaching play a huge role. But I’m wondering if at least some of the problems can be traced to California’s changing population. California is becoming more feudal each decade. The state may not be producing as many of the 5-star recruits in all positions, particularly the ones that require the big, burly types: d-line, o-line, linebackers. I’m not an expert. I’m just wondering.
All I have to go on is personal anecdote. I taught and coached in a California Central Valley high school and went to high school in another one of those Central Valley secondary schools. By the time I am working through my career as a teacher and coach, I began to notice the gradual decline of the towering, big, and burly teens in the student body. It reflected the shrinking portion from African Americans and the descendants of European immigrant families, far different from my personal high school experience and my early years in teaching and coaching.
It’s not simply a matter of race. The relationship between the social environment and biology is only beginning to be understood. We do know that over time, maybe generations, new groups take on the characteristics of the surrounding and prevalent groups. Point: things change and blend.
But, for the purposes of recruitment today, the pool has changed. There are indications that some in the coaching ranks allude to the fact.
I’ve monitored online forums, social media threads, and web reports on the state of play in college athletics, especially USC. Head coach Lincoln Riley naturally has been the brunt of criticism for the team’s performance. One of the recurring complaints is the relatively mediocre recruiting classes, especially if you want to compete for national championships. Related to that is the charge that he hasn’t recruited enough local talent (LA area, California broadly), like from powerhouses like St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Ca.) and Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Ca.). It is true but that the talent pool is plucked clean by programs from all over the country; though, this fact doesn’t detract from the possibility that the amount of highly rated athletes is incrementally shrinking leaving an intensifying feeding frenzy for what’s left each succeeding year.
So, when Riley responds to questions about mediocre recruiting classes, particularly locally, he’s quite right in saying that the local pool may not give you what you need. And, like everyone else, USC is in need of big, burly, fast, and smart. They surely can be found in California, but it’s unrealistic to expect USC to rake in the vast majority of them. And the problem worsens over the long term as California’s persistent outflux and influx change its population and athletic talent pool.
I’m wondering if California is demographically doomed. Somehow, USC and the other big California schools will have to increasingly try and convince athletes from a national pool to come to the land with the highest rate of poverty and homelessness, expensive everything, violent and property crimes galore, gangs, blight and filth from the urban core to exurbia to small towns to the fields and orchards.
The weather, beautiful coastline, and the Sierras may not be enough.
RogerG