‘Twas the day before national signing day. I was checking the Rivals’ college football team recruiting rankings for the 2008 season and something down right scary happened: I couldn’t find USC. I looked from #1 to #2. No USC. My eyes must have been playing tricks on me. I checked #1 again…no, that definitely said Florida. It wasn’t at #3 either. I shamefully looked all the way down to #5. No Trojans.

What the hell? The 11-2, Pete Carroll coached, Pac-10/Rose Bowl champs couldn’t be found in the top five? But the Fighting Irish somehow managed to steal the Trojan’s place at #2? Notre Dame? Since when is going 3-9 a good thing? Did these four and five-star Irish recruits not have televisions this past year? Am I stuck in some sort of disgusting Twilight Zone episode? USC had finished with one of the top three recruiting class for the past five years in a row. Three of those years USC was #1. Where was USC now? Not even on my computer screen! I had to scroll down!

SCROLL DOWN?! OH, THE HUMANITY!!!

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I finally found USC’s ranking and it shames me to say they weren’t even in the top nine. No, it wasn’t until #10 that I found USC. The Trojans haven’t had a ranking nearly that low since they placed #13 in 2002. Now somehow after six consecutive Pac-10 wins, the Trojans had fallen back close to where they started.

Granted #10 is not so bad. It’s a far cry from #20 and miles from #50. Still, a drop is a drop. It’s the difference between picking up Joe McKnight or settling for Raymond Carter. It’s not that USC has bad recruits, mind you. It’s just that they don’t have a lot of them. USC has 17 commits so far, compared to 28 recruits for #3 Alabama, and 25 recruits for both #4 Georgia, #6 Florida State and #9 LSU. When the competing teams have grabbed an additional eight to eleven ~3 and 4-star recruits, it’s easy to imagine how the gap quickly widens. Simply put, that’s future depth lost for the Trojans.

Still, although USC’s recruits may be small in number, they’re picking up some good star-power. The Trojans actually rank second on the list in terms of average-stars among the recruits with 3.88. Only behind Notre Dame who surprisingly managed 3.95. That’s because while other teams loaded up on 3-star recruits, like LSU who picked up 13 of them, USC only snagged four.

What it all means: One look at the senior bowl roster and it was easy to see this year will be a rebuilding year for the Trojans on both sides of the ball. You can’t loose Sedrick Ellis, Lawrence Jackson and Keith Rivers and not be effected. There’s always the glitches that accompany a transitional quarterback. Three-time All American Sam Baker is not the kind of guy that’s “replaceable.”

But five star offensive linemen Matt Kalil (#11 overall) and Tyron Smith (#15 overall) will do their best to literally and figuratively fill the holes left behind. Blake Ayles, one of the nation’s more promising tight end recruits, may be the next Fred Davis. And with top recruiting classes for the past three years, it’s not like USC is lagging far behind the competition. But Pete Carroll and his staff will have to step it up in future recruiting years, if they want to keep atop of the nation.

And they already have.

USC’s early commits for 2009 are already shaping it to be one of the nation’s premier recruiting classes. Mater Dei’s Matt Barkley, debatabley the top junior quarterback prospect in the country has already announced his commitment to the Trojans. And Birmingham high school’s junior wide-receiver, Devon Flournoy, recently stated his intention to become a Trojan.

If 2008 was an off year recruiting for the Trojans, 2009 is shaping to restore the natural order of the recruiting universe. If I have one hope, it’s that I don’t have to scroll down to find a USC ranking…ever, ever again.

And that Notre Dame drops down from #2 to #50, of course.

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