After a long winter’s nap (literally) I decompressed and was able to sit down and ponder over the past cycle of recruiting, and get some thoughts out on my laptop.

Honestly, I almost typed out “thoughts on paper”, but then remembered I was living in the 21st century.

First off, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up the fact that Washington won the Pac-12 in recruiting.

A 7-5 team — with a coach stepping down — an overall “down year” for the football program after winning two Pac-12 titles in the past four years and getting to the college football playoffs.

And yet they are ranked 14th nationally and beat out the ever-so-overly-hyped Oregon Ducks in recruiting. 

For me, just congratulating the Huskies for finishing first on Twitter triggered a barrage of hateful notifications and comments from Oregon fans — as if they’re entitled now in the world of college football. I may be the only writer out there who has the guts to call these bozos out and not bow down to their NIKE marketing machine and their advertising dollars like everyone else in the media does.

If I see one more article about how “surprising” it was to get Justin Flowe away from USC. 

But what’s even more surprising is a 7-5 team finish first in the conference, or getting the top center in the nation out of Mater Dei high school — a high school that’s traditionally a USC pipeline. 

Maybe it’s because Flowe waited to make a big announcement on signing day, just in time for all of these signing-day shows. Washington had their class done — there was no more drama to it.

But still, the “big story” wasn’t that the Huskies overcame a mediocre season and a profound coaching change to win the conference in recruiting, it was that Justin Flowe went to Oregon — as if the sky parted and the angels wept. 

Bah humbug. 

To be honest? I could truly care-less what Oregon does year in and year out. They’re not “special” anymore — they won the Pac-12 this year with a senior quarterback and a senior-led football team, and that’s to be expected in college football. If they hadn’t won the conference I would have been surprised, but they weren’t “special” enough to get past Arizona State when it mattered. They’re good, but the jury is still out on whether Mario can keep things going now that all of Helfrich’s guys are gone. And some of it will depend on how they replace Marcus Arroyo.

The Chip Kelly era is forever gone and they’ll have to depend on their marketing machine to keep them relevant during the “mediocre” years that will invariably come in the future (it happens in a conference with this much parity).

But what really sticks out in this recruiting cycle is how dismally low the USC Trojans finished.

This is right on par with what Washington went through for a few years before things got back to normal at Montlake.

I’ve always said (and this is a feeling shared by most), the Pac-12 needs a strong USC program. But at 58 years old, having covered recruiting and college football for almost 21 years now, I never thought I’d see the day that USC would finish dead last in the conference in recruiting.

Keep in mind, there is another signing period coming up, but the lion’s share of of the 2020 cycle is now over. 

So, that’s just a few random thoughts today. Over the next day I will continue to take a closer look at Washington’s class and also tell some back stories.