Somewhat OT: USC recruiting over the past few years

I don't think you can read anything into that but coincidence. Pete knows how to address needs based on his depth chart and it is likely those were his needs at the time. It is also likely that those particular years all those studs he recruited just happened to play one side of the ball.

Oh and don't forget there was a lot of negative recruiting that came out against Pete last year. This year it is rumored he is keeping quite a few silent commits so there is no way to tell how it is going to shake out.

with kids going to school for 4 or 5 years that's enough time for carroll (and all other coaches) to look at recruiting as two years combined together. coaches often do this if they think they're in on a lot of good prospects concentrated on one side of the ball. you're correct that in a way it helps bc the following year they can point to the fact that a player won't have much competition on his side of the ball in the previous recruiting class that would block his playing time. it's not something a coach will set out doing but something he is more aware of in the recruiting process.

The '09 class was heavy on defense because they graduated many players off of defense. If they continue heavy on offense they probably expect to graduate many offensive players this year

It could be a trend that started a long time ago possibly just due to a lot of talent one year on either the offensive or defensive side of the ball. Might be as simple as he sees a lot more players leaving on offense rather than defense in the near future and is recruiting accordingly. All the talk during the USC v. OSU game they spoke of how their entire Oline could be first round draft picks and that "stable" of RBs want to get a shot at the last cap-free draft. Besides Taylor Mays, I don't see a defense that contained as much talent as last years' group (that LB core was sick and Cushing is a monster on the Texans).

I don't see how this is at all off topic, but it is interesting.

Could it be that he's just taking the BPA every year and the talent levels of interested kids were just different those two years? Or was it skewed one way the first year and he had to turn hard the other way to balance it out?

I think that it could possibly be a combination of a few factors - but it is not necessarily that Carroll intends to take a class that is heavy one way or the other in alternate years. I am starting from the assumption that Carroll will take the best players available.

If a lot of players are graduating from the defense in a given year, then the blue chip recruits will be more interested in signing. The commenters above assume that players are looking at the class immediately preceding them to determine whether the depth chart is attractive, but I would argue that if you're a 5* free safety, you just want to know if there is an incumbent starter. If the starter is graduating, you assume you can step in and play - or at least thats what the coaches tell you. So even if the previous class is balanced, you will have a heavy defense class if you are graduating your whole defense because you will be able to sign more blue chip players on that side of the ball. If the choice is an unbalanced class with all 5* defensive players, or a balanced class with lower ranked offensive players, then Carroll will take the unbalanced class.

I apologize if this is what someone was getting at above, but I didn't think it was exactly the same.

SC has a very young defense with one senior on the two-deep in the front seven and tons of underclassmen on the depth chart. To keep a 50/50 split on the roster they need to bring in an unbalanced class.

wow really. If he brings in a def. heavy class then when they graduate (in a "few" years) he will need to bring in another def. heavy class. Nothing to read into here. Dumb post.