USC gets top 5 and most of the time top 3 if not #1 classes. I wanted someone to show me where Nebraska signed CONSENSUS top 10 classes in football recruiting EVERY YEAR like USC because someone posted that Nebraska had the same type of talent USC has today back in the 90s!
OK. I'll play.
First, the assumption that talent on a college football team is best measured by the predictions of college football success based upon High School performance --- this is, based upon recruiting rankings, is very flawed. The talent of a college football team is MUCH BETTER measured by players exiting that team and making it in the NFL draft.
On this basis, many of the Osborne teams of the 90's were very, very, very talented. Scores of players went to the NFL. Without looking this up and getting actual numbers, I'd guess that NU definitely, absolutely were in the top 10 most every year of the 1990's in terms of players drafted (perhaps not every year, but most years, and even in off years they were in the top 20 anyhow). Many years they were in the top 5 --- again a guess --- someone with more time can validate or invalidate this.
The point --- the Husker teams of the 90's had a great deal of talent. Now compared to USC these past 6-7 years (that is NU in the 90's vs. USC in the 2000's) I'd guess that USC in the 2000's had more players drafted per year on average than did the Huskers and yes, I'd say that the talent edge probably goes to USC --- but probably not by as wide a gap as most would guess.
HS recruiting evaluations (recruiting rankings) are meaningless compared to exiting players drafted. by this measure, NU was very talented and even in view of that talent NU over-achieved. USC is even more talented in the 2000's than was NU in the 1990's (likely by a closer margin than most think) but they grossly under-achieved.
NU had a superior system and better coaching than does USC.
For what it is worth, Pete Carrol is the most over-rated coach in the nation --- with the talent he has, he should have won at least one and probably two more MNC's than he has. USC has little excuse not to win essentially every game. Carrol can recruit (and it is easy to do so at USC), but manage the egos and get the guys to play hard, tough, consistent football at or near their peek --- no --- not so good.
Osborne and his staff could and did maximise the productivity from what they had. This is why NU in the 1990's was more sucessful than USC has been in the 2000's. Osborne was a superior coach relative to Carrol. Carrol had more talent (again not by the margin one might think) but he could not elicit from that talent the performance needed to dominate. Actually, right now arguably Florida is the team of the 2000's, not USC.