People forget that UW always recruited well in So Cal even in the waning dreck filled years of Jim Owens. James had some decent talent here when he took over. Just not enough.
He then nabbed Warren Moon out of LA to show the world that things had changed at UW and we would play a natural athlete who needed to spend more time in the film room at QB.
James did well in SO Cal and the Bay Area, the two places Oregon took over from us. When James took over the Bay Area the set the stage for decades of dominance over Cal and Stanford.
Recruiting matters. It wasn't until we dropped football that the doogs came up with this bullshit about how we can't recruit in Cali and you can't blame a kid for taking a Stanford offer and all that crap.
Now when I see we are after a kid who has an Oregon offer I know we're fucked. That's a 180 degree turn folks. We need to make it 360.
This is the whole fucking (hole fucking?) ball of wax right here.
The strategy for our recruiting has always been the same: Get 90% of the best kids in WA, Beat everyone outside of the LA schools for recruits 80% of the time, win 20% of the battles with the LA schools.
Right now we're getting about 80% of the best kids out of Washington (losing Eason is huge no matter how much I like Pete);
We're beating ASU about 50% of the time, Oregon about 15% and Stanford about 33%.
OSU, Utah, WSU, Colorado, Cal and Zona about 80% of the time.
We're beating USC and UCLA about 5% of the time.