Certainly there will be more high level athletes in California than in Utah, there are 10 times as many people in California. But there is also 50 times more competition for that California talent so the odds of BYU actually getting the highest level of talent in California is very slim, so just saying they need to get more of those guys is frankly unrealistic.

But the other fact is that BYU doesn’t even get the best players in Utah all that often, at least not in football, a little more often in basketball, so they aren’t crippled because of Utah talent when they can’t even get most of it.

And the truth is that the highest level of players in Utah compare favorably to the highest level of players in California, California just has more of them. But Siaki Ika, the dlineman from east this year was as good as any dlineman California put out. Puka Nacua, the wr from Orem was as good as any of the wr’s California put out. And once again my point stands because BYU did not get either of those Utah kids.

And the list extends from there. If BYU could get the best Utah talent they would compete favorably because the best Utah talent is as good as the best talent anywhere else albeit in smaller numbers. But it is big enough numbers for one school to thrive if they could get them all like BYU used to back in the day. When BYU was truly good they had a majority of Utah players in their roster and got every single top recruit in the state, almost none left and noe went to the university of Utah either. BYU would then pick off the top LDS talent from other states to fill things out, and a few non LDS kids from other states and they were indeed a national power.

And the irony is that the state of Utah has a population 3 times bigger now than it did then, which means based on averages 3 times as much top talent as there was back then, and three times as much mid level talent, and so on. But they don’t get very many of them because schools in California (like usc) for some reason are coming to Utah and taking Utah’s top talent rather than another California kid. Why would that be? Could it be because that top Utah talent either compares favorably to the top California talent or may even be better sometimes?

Food for thought, and needs to actually be thought about before making another post like that.