Football Recruiting Rivalries: USC

Welcome back to our deep dive series on Irish football recruiting rivalries. There are a few key schools who make you go all Captain Kirk when they sign a Notre Dame target, because DAMMIT THEY DID IT AGAIN. We’re talking about those schools. We kicked off the series with a review of the Stanford recruiting rivalry, continued by poking the Wolverine(s), then circled our Conestoga wagons to limited effect, and most recently confirmed that the buckeye nut is indeed poisonous (really!). It’s been a mixed bag so far, with the Irish having more success against one flora than the other, and more success against the large, secretive weasels than the intrepid pioneers brazen squatters of the Great Plains. Today, as has happened so many times throughout history, we discuss Irish performance in opposition to prophylactics.

Methodology

I’m going to include every commit who had offers from the other team in the win/loss counts, even if I know those offers weren’t really committable in some cases. This is because while I know that in some cases, I’m aware that neither I nor anyone else truly knows the status of all offers. Plus I have much more intimate knowledge of Notre Dame recruiting than opponents’ recruiting, of course, and it would be intellectually dishonest of me to say “they got recruit X because we didn’t push” and ignore the potential for that to happen in the other direction as well.

I broke the Kelly Epoch down into three distinct chunks to compare these rivalries: the 2011-14 classes, which we’ll call the Diaco Era, the 2015-17 classes, which we’ll call the BVG Era, and the 2018-20 classes, which we’ll call the Revival Era. Notre Dame’s on-field record in those three eras are, in order, 37-15, 22-16, and 22-4. Keep those in mind as you consume the other info here, as they’re obviously major factors in themselves. Note that while I’m using the DC’s names, we’re still looking at recruits on both sides of the ball in those eras. It’s just a convenient nomenclature.

Finally, we’ll cap each review with a quick look at the 2018-2020 cycles. Those are the ones that coincide with a better on-field product and a more recruiting-focused coaching staff, which should give us more of a sense of what is possible when things are going well.

The Scoreboard

As noted in the last installment, nobody in our series has taken a greater share of common targets from Notre Dame than USC. Going against USC for recruits holds a number of natural challenges; we typically fight with them for West Coast/Southwest kids, they’re as much of a blue blood as we are, and like Ohio State they can offer an easier path for those who want it. I wouldn’t expect us to be above .500 against them, if for no other reason than they can walk out their front door in any given year and find a couple dozen blue-chip prospects who have dreamed of playing for them. Any coach north of a sock monkey should be able to recruit reasonably well there. We should do better than we did in the middle of this table (more on that below), but taking a smaller share overall is hardly surprising.

One thing from this table that’s a little more notable is that we went head-to-head with them more often in the BVG Era, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom. In both the Diaco Era and the Revival Era, we’ve averaged 10 common targets per cycle; in the BVG Era, we averaged 13. That could just be a statistical quirk, or it could be a function of recruiting management.

Wins and Losses

When Notre Dame’s on-field product is crap and the staff has deadweight recruiters, all those natural challenges mentioned above are magnified. I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but, well… It’s true! Notre Dame took just two of 20 common defensive targets in the BVG Era – Daelin Hayes in 2016, who was committed to USC at one point, and Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa in 2017, who the Trojans thankfully overlooked. As legend has it, Mike Elston saw MTA in the Coliseum tunnel at the end of the 2016 death march season and said “Who is that?” Fun.

Thankfully, Clay Helton is a feckless doofus and it’s starting to turn around. May they employ him forever.

Quality Control

Interestingly, the amount Notre Dame has closed the gap on offense is more related to USC’s average dropping than Notre Dame’s rising. I didn’t check on this, but I would imagine that the most likely explanation is that USC has been losing more top common targets to other schools; their recruiting success under Helton, much like their on-field performance, has trended steadily downwards.

On defense, once again, Notre Dame’s performance cratered during the BVG Era and is starting to rebound. To give you a sense of how bad the 2015-17 differential is, USC’s average defensive prospect was a top-75-ish player while Notre Dame’s was top-300-ish. Yikes.

Highlights/Lowlights

Lemon juice on your paper cut in the form of some of USC’s more notable wins:

• Five-star CB Iman Marshall, 2015: “Biggie” kinda-sorta had some interest in Notre Dame, but the Long Beach Poly alum was always going to USC.
• Five-star S Su’a Cravens, 2013: Similarly, Cravens never seriously considered anyone but the Trojans. Cravens is probably best known to Notre Dame fans via the common Irish plaint of “if Su’a Cravens can start as a freshman, why can’t our safeties play sooner?” Which ignores the fact that (a) classmate Max Redfield was most decidedly not Su’a Cravens, as are very few prospects, and (b) Cravens wasn’t tasked with the equivalent of finding the area under a curve while wing-walking and juggling flaming clubs. Ah. Good times.
• Five-star CB Adoree Jackson, 2014: Jackson went to USC feeder Junipero Serra but was somewhat open to other schools, as he at least made some official visits. Alas, he never visited Notre Dame.
• Five-star WR George Farmer, 2011: Another Junipero Serra product who never even blinked in Notre Dame’s direction.
• Five-star WR Amon-Ra St. Brown, 2018: The 2016 season led to the middle St. Brown son, Osiris, committing to Stanford. The, ahem, uneven performance of the 2017 passing game killed any chance of the Irish landing Amon-Ra. His Mater Dei teammate JT Daniels reclassifying from the 2020 class to the 2019 class didn’t help, either.
• Five-star LB Palaie Gaoteote, 2018: We finally encounter someone from outside the greater Los Angeles area. Gaoteote first attended Mililani High, about an hour from Honolulu, before transferring to powerhouse program Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas. There was some optimism in Irish corners that the mini-pipeline of Ronnie Stanley, Alize Mack, and Nicco Fertitta might encourage Gaoeteote to at least give Notre Dame a look, but no interest ever materialized.
• Five-star QB JT Daniels, 2019: Aaaaaand… back to LA. As noted above, Daniels re-classified from the 2020 class to the 2019 class to get closer to his father’s NFL dream. He had some very brief interest early on in Notre Dame and Stanford, but ultimately wasn’t going anywhere but USC.
• Five-star WR Juju Smith-Schuster, 2014: A brutal, brutal loss on another Long Beach Poly prospect. Smith-Schuster is about as ideal a fit for Notre Dame as you could possibly imagine, yet USC convinced him to stay home. Juju is the one loss to the Trojans that bothers me the most. Those jerks didn’t deserve this kid.
• Five-star DT Rasheem Green, 2015: Yet another Junipero Serra kid who you could pencil in for USC from the moment he looked like a D1 player. He made some visits (none to ND) but inevitably landed with the Trojans on signing day.
• Five-star RB Stephen Carr, 2017: I remember him expressing a tiny bit of interest in Notre Dame early on, but I might be making that up. Either way, he never visited and is yet another Los Angeles area prospect that seemed destines for USC from the beginning. Like I said, a sock monkey.
• Five-star OG Chuma Edoga, 2015: Here we encounter the first guy outside USC’s region. I would imagine it took a little more effort to pull a five-star Georgia OL away from Georgia, who courted him heavily. He didn’t seriously consider anyone else.
• Five-star DE Oluwole Betiku, 2016: Hey, guess what? He’s a Junipero Serra kid who went to USC! The Irish made the final two here, but ultimately South Bend wasn’t the scene Betiku was looking for. This spring he announced a transfer to Illinois, which in hindsight is kinda funny.
• Five-star CB Jack Jones, 2016: And another Long Beach Poly kid who, shockingly, picked USC. Are you sensing a theme here? Jones never visited Notre Dame and chose USC from a final group with Alabama and Texas A&M (a nod to Bear Bryant, no doubt). He showed some promise but was derailed by a misdemeanor burglary conviction for breaking into a Panda Express one night. From what I can find he took classes elsewhere to stay eligible and hopes to transfer somewhere soon.
• Five-star WR Nelson Agholor, 2012: If Juju is the best Notre Dame fit who went to USC, Agholor is the second-best. What makes this one sting even more is that Agholor is from Florida, so he doesn’t have the hometown pull that Juju did. Agholor took an official visit to Notre Dame and had the Irish in his final group with USC and Florida, but the “fun” choice won out.
• Five-star LB Osa Masina, 2015: Masina hailed from Utah, just the fourth prospect on this list from outside the LA area. With (positive) memories of Manti Te’o still relatively fresh, many Irish faithful were hopeful that Masina would give Notre Dame a look. He never did, and it was better that he didn’t: Masina was arrested in Utah on one count of rape and two counts of forcible sodomy, and ultimately pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual battery in late 2017. He was sentenced to one year in prison and two years of probation; I can’t find any updates on him since then.
• Five-star S Leon McQuay, 2013: McQuay is originally from Florida and, despite never seriously considering the Irish, had a final three of USC, Michigan, and Vanderbilt. I don’t remember his recruitment and I’m not sure exactly why we didn’t make a bigger impact on him, but on the face of it you’d think we would.
• Five-star CB Joseph Lewis, 2017: Interesting case. Lewis and classmate Greg Johnson, a four-star CB and also an Irish target, were part of the brand-new Hawkins program in Los Angeles. Their offensive coordinator happened to be a guy who played for (and loved) Brian Kelly at Cincinnati, and was more than happy to host the Irish staff. Lewis himself took an unofficial visit to Notre Dame, but nothing every materialized after that. In February of last year he was charged with two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence, pleaded no contest and served 60 days in jail, and two weeks after his release was arrested on a felony domestic violence charge. He’s currently serving a one-year prison sentence.
• Top 50 RB Ronald Jones, 2015: Jones is another tough loss – a Texan who had Notre Dame in his final group. His last official visit, in fact, was to Notre Dame for the football banquet. He again was a great fit, but in his final season on staff Tony Alford couldn’t seal the deal and convince Jones that South Bend was the best place for him.
• Top 50 RB Ty Isaac, 2013: Notre Dame fans savaged the staff at the time for losing a Joliet Catholic kid – you know, Rudy’s school – to USC, especially as the staff thought his best future was at linebacker. Isaac made a few visits as a junior but the staff couldn’t get any traction beyond that. He redshirted at USC before transferring to Michigan, where he became a solid if unspectacular contributor in the ground game.
• Top 100 WR Amir Carlisle, 2011: Should this really count as a loss? Carlisle took a winter official visit to Notre Dame before committing to USC, and then transferred to Notre Dame after one year with the Trojans. He was granted a hardship waiver for immediate eligibility because his father’s job relocated to Indiana; unfortunately, in what I imagine is an oft-forgotten element of his story, he sat out that year anyway because he broke his ankle in a non-football related incident with Davaris Daniels. The most official rumor was that it was roughhousing that got out of control, although there were a few less official rumors that it wasn’t as light-hearted as that. In any case, the Irish played the Reverse card in this Uno hand.

Eleven of the top thirteen guys in this list came from somewhere within a two-hour drive of Los Angeles and one of the other two came from Hawaii, which has traditionally sent a good share of its best players to Southern Cal. That’s the natural obstacle that Notre Dame is up against in this rivalry.

And now some Neosporin in the form of the most notable Notre Dame wins:

• Five-star LB Jaylon Smith, 2013
• Five-star DT Eddie Vanderdoes, 2013
• Five-star LB Ishaq Williams, 2011
• Five-star QB Gunner Kiel, 2012
• Five-star S Max Redfield, 2013
• Five-star WR Jordan Johnson, 2020
• Top 100 RB Greg Bryant, 2013
• Top 100 TE Ben Koyack, 2011
• Top 100 WR Davonte Neal, 2012
• Top 100 LB Nyles Morgan, 2014
• Top 100 OT Matt Hegarty, 2011
• Top 100 TE Alize Mack, 2015
• Top 100 OT Tosh Baker, 2020
• Top 100 TE Brock Wright, 2017
• Top 100 DB Houston Griffith, 2018
• Top 100 WR Kevin Austin, 2018
• Top 100 S Elijah Shumate, 2012
• Top 100 RB Dexter Williams, 2015

That’s a pretty strong list. It also has two Californians on it, and one of them never enrolled. Again, a sock monkey.

Recent History

I like the guys we got in 2018, but there’s no way around the fact that USC destroyed Notre Dame in that cycle. Stepp flipped from Notre Dame after being unable to clear admissions, which really stunk, and I’m not sure how hard the staff chased Winston. Otherwise, all those guys had a seat if they wanted it. There were rumors of some improprieties with a couple of kids, some I believe more than others; that’s not so surprising because, come on, it’s USC, but what does raise an eyebrow a bit is that their last couple of classes have been light on elite guys and rumors. I wonder if the erstwhile-profligate and now-restless natives are submarining Helton a bit. Have a heart, guys. He needs a paycheck.

2019 was, once again, a much tighter battle, and one you could argue we won. The Irish didn’t heavily recruit London, Rodriguez, Goforth, or Rae. They definitely chased Williams and Christon and would’ve loved to have Ford, who showed less than zero interest in leaving the West Coast. Meanwhile, Carroll would’ve been comfortably their best OL recruit (ahead of Rodriguez), and Rutherford, Foskey, and Osafo-Mensah are all ranked very far above other guys they took at the same position. Ford might tilt this cycle to USC by himself, but there’s a reasonable argument to be made for a Notre Dame win.

There are probably one or two common targets who could jump into USC’s 2020 class, but I don’t expect this to change much from the bloodbath it looks like now. Johnson would be their highest-rated commit. Baker and Botelho would be their highest-rated non-QB commits by a very wide margin. Even the Big Kahuna would be their third-highest rated commit, regardless of position (he’s 10th in our current 17-man class). Please guys, Clay Helton has a family to feed. Don’t leave him out on the street.