USC football recruiting gets a big boost with Floyd Boucard’s arrival

Oklahoma lost Floyd Boucard. The USC Trojans picked him up. The three-star defensive lineman from Miami has instantly created a major talking point for the future of USC football recruiting. If this particular player turns out to be special, USC and Oklahoma fans will never forget it, precisely because of the new rivalry created between the schools by the move of Lincoln Riley from Norman to Los Angeles.

It’s true that Boucard is not a five-star prospect. Oklahoma fans are sure to downplay that part of this story. Yet, any recruit who decommits from one of these schools and goes to the other will instantly become a referendum (at least to a point) on either Lincoln Riley or Brent Venables. Recruits who commit to one of these schools and then leave to join the other school will invite the question, “How would things have been different if this recruit had not slipped away?” The other follow-up question becomes, “How much better is the new school as a result of the recruit it once thought it had lost?” USC will now get to see just how much value Floyd Boucard can add to the Trojan program, and Oklahoma fans have to wonder how much value they lost with Boucard’s decommitment from the Sooners and his move to Los Angeles. Let’s go through some media analysis and other elements of the general reaction to this new recruiting plot twist, which worked in USC’s favor: