USC football labeled among worst developers of talent in entire country

Chris Hummer of 247Sports just dropped a piece called 'Development Rating 2022: A five-year deep dive into which programs best develop elite, blue-chip talent.' His findings revealed that USC football has been the seventh-worst program in the country at developing elite, blue-chip talent.

This was found by analyzing how many top 247 recruits schools have have had in the last five years, and what percentage of those got drafted. USC had 43 top 247 players in the last five years, and just 34.9% of them were drafted. Therefore, they earned a 'development rating' of 0.53.

Well, at least USC wasn't second-worst. That was Pac-12 opponent Oregon, who had 15 top 247 players in the past five years and just 26.7% of them were drafted. They had an 0.32 development rating. Still, however, SC needs to be at the top of the conference in developing talent, which they have not been.

Washington, actually, was No. 1 in the conference according to this study. They, like Oregon, had 15 top 247 players. 53.3% of them, however, were drafted to the league. That led to a development rating of 1.00. That's fourth in the country--behind just Virginia Tech (No. 1), Alabama (No. 2), and Ohio State (No. 3).

USC football will soon be much improved, however, when it comes to developing talent.

USC football is about to turn developing talent from a weakness into a strength, however. They just hired Lincoln Riley to be the head coach. Riley was the coach at Oklahoma these past five years. In those five years, 247Sports gave them the No. 9 development rating in all of football with an 0.85.

Riley had 25 top 247 recruits to work with in his time at OU, and 44% of them were drafted. He's most certainly one of the better developers in all of college football, and now is going to have even better rosters to work with here at SC.

Keep in mind, in his five years at OU, he had 25 top 247 recruits. At SC in these past five years, ex-USC Head Coach Clay Helton had 43. That's obviously a huge difference.

Riley will now have USC caliber rosters with his abilities as a developer. He absolutely has the chance to turn SC around very quickly, and is exactly what SC was desperately missing.