these facts remain: the best high school football team are in florida, california, and texas. then you have ohio, illinois, pennsylvania.
these kids usually stay in-state. that is why the USC's, the Florida's, the Texas's are always ranked very high.
schools like ND cannot compete anymore. you take a 17 year old black kid from california and show him ND. he's never seen snow except on tv, and the only blacks he sees at ND are other football players.
then take him to USC. sun, girls, no problem getting past the academic committee, and closer to mom.
i can't remember the last ND linebacker to get drafted, while USC had four drafted last year. one of them didn't even start at USC!
Those are 2004 numbers, and USC’s academic standards have improved since then. My point was that a 40 point average SAT score difference between these schools is not that substantial considering that ND is averaging 1/3 of the amount of students - USC has total enrollment of over 33,000, while ND has just under 11,000. California does have a great in-state athlete base, but few schools have the kind of national reputation and fan-base that Notre Dame has...it should be able to compete with ease and used to quite effectively. Schools go through slumps, USC went through one, and ND is currently going through one. I expect ND to back in the game soon enough, and would be hugely disappointed if they weren’t.