The Athletic had a fascinating article by Bruce Feldman on USC's struggles. Since it's paywalled, here are some of the more interesting points that I found fascinating.

They said that USC is highly ranked in recruiting every year partly because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. .

"USC is always gonna be ranked top 10 in recruiting but that's because when you commit to USC you're all of a sudden a 'great' recruit". Said one of the former assistants. "We had coaches in the building who knew guys at (the recruiting sites) and they'd call them 'Hey I need you to rate this kid as a 4-star before I take his commitment'. That's the way that stuff works."

The article talks about how even though USC gets 5 star recruits, they aren't necessarily good players or a good fit in terms of the needs of the team. Mentioned how one of the 5 stars LBs they recruited would have been a good player 30 years ago when all you had to do was fill an A gap, but now players are recruited to tackle perimeter screens and go sideline to sideline. Comparison is made to UCLA who has less talent, but focuses on recruiting kids that fit the scheme better.

The other interesting point made was that USC probably had issues because they were trying to clean up the program from prior scandals. "There's probably 20 kids a year, maybe 30, that are getting paid big money to play college football", the former assistant said. "The vast majority of them are quarterbacks and D-lineman. We had multiple staff meetings where Clay said 'If you get caught cheating, you are being fired.'" There's a later paragraph about how USC is working on NIL deals with "BLVD" and this should help.

In terms of how this relates to BYU, I think we've all known that recruiting services are inflated and rigged even as we fans get caught up in the recruiting rankings. But I do feel that Kalani has a done a better job of finding recruits that fit the program and team's needs. We've been low in the recruiting rankings comparatively, but looking at this team's talent the last 3 games shows Kalani has been successful in building depth and identifying talent outside of the star rankings. Tyler Allgeier was a walk-on. Zach Wilson was a three star. I give Kalani and the rest of the staff credit for identifying and developing talent even if it wasn't 4/5 star.

I also think the NIL deals BYU is doing is going to make a big difference. BYU was always going to be above board with the NCAA rules compared to other football and basketball bluebloods. Look at how we self reported Nick Emery and got wrecked...but North Carolina got a slap on the wrist. At least with NIL's now, there's more of a level playing field because we can pay players legally. And I think that's a pretty big deal when the rest of the schools have been doing it under the table for years.