Just going by his age, Daniels is still a senior in high school. He graduated from MD after his junior year in June of 2018, so even though he had an up and down freshman season at USC what he accomplished is still impressive. Daniels wasn't a generational talent. He was a quality Division 1 QB something the WPIAL leaves me wanting.
By way of background, Mater Dei plays in Division I and the level of play in Division I of the Southern Section of CIF is far, far superior to PA 6A football. These are the 18 best programs in Southern California and you can get shamefully relegated every two years if you're not competitive enough. It's also Disneyland (or ground zero) for college recruiters. It's the SEC of HS football. Some private school teams in D-1 have 30 coaches - I'm not making that up - between freshman, JV and varsity staffs and the kids are coming out ready for college football. The parochial schools have amazing facilities, budgets disclosed by some to be between $500k-$750k funded by $3,500+ participation fees to help cover the stipends, travel costs, stadium rental, and new uniforms and gear that's ordered annually. Fundraising ideas brought forth by boosters aren't even approved by head coaches unless they can net 5 figures - otherwise it's not an effective use of time. The kids are bigger, stronger, faster, better coached and better prepared. Best of all there are so many under-recruited kids that all you have to do is invest time there and you'll find P5 players. These are the P5 caliber kids who wanted to go to USC or UCLA but by virtue of scholarship limits they ran into a numbers problem at their first choice and want a home.
There are over 700 high schools serving over 25 million people in Southern California (between the Southern Section and the LA City and San Diego sections) and, what, three 1A programs (USC, UCLA and SDSU)? You do the math. Pitt has the opposite problem - there are too many P5 schools too close to Pittsburgh competing for too few P5 ready WPIAL players and the school has not made enough inroads to recruiting hot beds to compensate. Have you ever noticed how "generational" WPIAL talents you people on this board become enamored with who never fully materialize at Pitt? Think Dorin Dickerson, Jordan Whitehead and now Paris Ford. These are kids who dominated at lower levels and end up as jacks of all trades at the P5 level. Sure Dickerson and Whitehead played in the NFL but the role we thought they would flourish in for four years never materialized. (i.e Dickerson as a WR/RB and Whitehead as a RB/CB.) About six years or so ago (on this board I believe) I was ridiculed for dismissing a WPIAL recruit named Rushel Shell as very average compared to starting Division I RB's in Southern California. I'm piling on a bit here but the WPIAL superstars that you think are P5 ready are not the same caliber kids who are definitely P5 ready coming out of Division 1.
Obviously, USC, UCLA and SDSU can only sign so many, ergo, naturally, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and the other Pac-12 schools move in and guess what? There take their cut and there's still high quality kids available. So the XII moves in and there's still kids left over. Then crickets. This explains why junior college football is so good in California. These are kids who can and should play in the B1G, ACC or American but by virtue of not having those schools invest in recruiting there they end up at a JC rather than lowering themselves to play at 1-AA or D-II or D-III because they know they can play at the 1-A level. Heck Ricky Town isn't very good but he's way better than anyone that came out of the WPIAL that year.
OK, now back to Ford and how he relates to my point. Ford through no fault of his own was overrated and simply ill-prepared mentally and physically for P5 college football in 2017 and we've learned he wasn't ready in 2018 either. Can he improve? Sure. Hopefully he will. Hopefully in time for 2019. The lesson is just because a recruiting service says a WPIAL kid is a five-star prospect that means nothing to me and you too should take it with a grain of salt. There are better kids, and more of them, playing in better classifications, just a 1, 2, 3 or 4 hour flight away.
The California kids have always been just too far away for the Junko Gang I guess. But there's still time. Tell Tim Salem and Shawn Watson and Pat Narduzzi and Andre Powell when you see them at a bar to eschew Junko's decades old philosophy that recruiting dollars are best spent locally. Tell them to up their game. Tell them to spend the money where the abundance of high quality players are. Gents, it's time to go fishing exclusively in Florida, Texas, California, Louisiana and Georgia. Then maybe Ohio and Jersey. Then maybe North Carolina and Virginia.
