When Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma for USC, one of the hot topics of discussion was Riley’s ability to recruit the state of California.
California, along with Texas and Florida, has long been considered the recruiting hotbed for college football. USC being the biggest brand in the state and Riley’s propensity for offense created an assumption that he was going to put the state on lockdown.
Well, in the 2024 recruiting cycle, that was far from the case.
The Trojans only signed one player in On3’s top 10 from 2024. The same number that Brent Venables and the Sooners signed the state of California. In fact, Oklahoma’s signee, OL Eugene Brooks, ranked higher in On3’s California industry player rankings than USC’s top 10 signee, WR Xavier Jordan.
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Meanwhile, Alabama and Oregon had multiple top-10 signees from the state.
In California’s top 20, Oregon had seven signees. USC had two. The Oklahoma Sooners also had two of the top 20 players in the Golden State. After reclassifying to the 2024 recruiting class, Davon Mitchell dropped in the rankings and finished at No. 14. Had he kept his 2025 ranking, he might have finished in the top 10 in the state.
In the 2024 Oklahoma state industry rankings at On3, Oklahoma signed six players in the top 20. For comparison in the state, Tulsa signed three players in the top 20 in Oklahoma and Oklahoma State signed two. The Sooners are dominating the state of Oklahoma and are also pulling recruits from the big three recruiting hot beds.
Lincoln Riley’s a good coach, but letting Oregon and Dan Lanning come in and dominate the state will make it difficult for the Trojans to have long-term success, especially as they head into the Big Ten. And with Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma also invading California recruiting, it’s not going to get any easier for Riley and his staff on the recruiting trail.
More: How each recruiting site ranked Oklahoma’s 2024 signees
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Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss the Trump administration’s crackdown on Medicaid fraud, Republicans’ push for new immigration enforcement funding and President Donald Trump’s latest trade negotiations with China.
Learn more about candidates’ stances on the issues in the California Governor’s Race interactive guide
CBS News California launched an interactive tool to help voters navigate this year’s gubernatorial race. The California Governor’s Race Candidate Guide features 20 hours of interviews with top-polling candidates to provide voters the opportunity to compare each candidate’s responses side-by-side on the issues that matter most to them.
Those running to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom as California’s next chief executive offered their thoughts on more than a dozen issues, including homelessness, housing affordability, gas prices and environmental policy, immigration, healthcare, crime and public safety funding, and the state’s ongoing insurance crisis.
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Here’s what to know about the CBS News California/San Francisco Examiner Governor’s Debate format
The format of the CBS News California and San Francisco Examiner Governor’s Debate on Thursday will allow candidates to question each other directly.
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Candidates will also participate in segments in which they address real-world issues California voters may face in their daily lives. The Californians who will be featured include a working single mother pursuing education; a couple struggling to achieve homeownership; and a scientist warning of the long-term consequences of inaction on climate change.
This structure for Thursday’s debate differs from the previous face-off hosted by CBS News California stations, which comprised three segments focused on affordability, accountability and social issues that lasted roughly half an hour each.
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Becerra, Hilton, Steyer lead field in latest polling on California governor’s race
An Emerson College poll released the day before the CBS News California and San Francisco Examiner Governor’s Debate showed Xavier Becerra leading the field with likely voters surveyed at 19%, followed by Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer both receiving 17%. Chad Bianco came in at 11%, followed by Katie Porter at 10%, Matt Mahan at 8%, Antonio Villaraigosa at 4% and Tony Thurmond at 1%. Twelve percent said they remained undecided.
In a CBS News/YouGov poll last month conducted before the April 28 CBS California Governor’s Debate, Hilton received support from 16% of likely voters polled, with Steyer and Becerra following at 15% and 13% respectively. Bianco came in at 10%, Porter received 9%, Matt Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa both received 4%, and Tony Thurmond received 1%. The survey also found that a significant 26% of those polled were undecided.
California’s June 2 primary is an open primary where the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, advance to face off in the November general election.
By Dan Walters, CalMatters
The Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington, on Sept. 30, 2025. Photo by Stella Kalinina for CalMatters
This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Two decades ago, when California got serious about reducing or even eliminating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, its political leaders weighed two potential tactics about industrial emissions.
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The state could impose direct facility-by-facility limits, generally favored by climate change advocates. Or it could set overall emission reduction goals that would gradually decrease and auction off emission allowances, assuming their costs would encourage reductions.
The latter, known as cap-and-trade, was favored by corporate interests as being less onerous and was adopted, finally taking effect in 2012.
Since then, the California Air Resources Board has conducted quarterly auctions of emission allowances, collecting a total of $35 billion dollars so far, which, in theory, is being spent on projects that would reduce emissions.
The revenues have varied from year to year, but they have generally increased as the emission caps have declined. Since reaching a peak of $8.1 billion in the 2023-24 fiscal year, however, auction proceeds have been declining.
Roughly half of the money has been given to utilities to minimize cap-and-trade’s impact on consumer costs. However, the program has been widely criticized as a de facto tax on gasoline and other fuels, which were already among the most expensive of any state.
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The remaining revenues have been deposited into a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that governors and legislators have tapped for various purposes, not all of them connected to emission reductions. In a sense, it’s been a slush fund.
Last year Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature overhauled the program in two bills, Senate Bill 840 and Assembly Bill 1207. The program was extended, it was renamed as cap-and-invest and new priorities for spending auction proceeds were set.
Notably, the state’s cash-strapped and long-stalled bullet train project would get a flat $1 billion a year, rather than the 25% share it had been getting. Project managers hope that lenders will advance enough money to complete its first leg in the San Joacim Valley; the plan is to repay the loans from the $1 billion annual cap-and-invest allocation.
Early this year, the Air Resources Board released new regulations to implement the legislative changes but faced criticism that they would increase consumer costs. That led to a revision in April that softens the rules’ impact — most obviously on refiners who have been threatening to leave California — but environmental groups are very critical.
The April version would also sharply reduce net revenues from emission auctions, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, providing barely enough for the $1 billion allocation to the bullet train and another $1 billion for the governor and Legislature to spend. Other programs that have been receiving cap-and-invest support, such as wildfire protection and housing, would probably get nothing.
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The program has been tapped in recent years to backfill programs that a deficit-ridden state budget could not cover, so the projected revenue drop would exacerbate efforts by Newsom and legislators to close the state budget’s yawning gap.
“The (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund) is a relatively small portion of the overall state budget, but it has been a noteworthy source of funding for environmental and other programs in recent years,” the state Assembly’s budget advisor, Jason Sisney, says in an email. “Collapse of its revenues would change the state budget process noticeably. The state’s cost-pressured general fund seemingly would be unable to make up much, if any, of a significant (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund) revenue decline at this time.”
When Newsom presents his revised budget this week, he may reveal how he intends to cover the cap-and-invest program’s shortfall, particularly whether he will maintain the $1 billion bullet train commitment that project leaders say is vital to continuing construction of its Merced-to-Bakersfield segment.
It could boil down to bullet train vs. wildfire protection.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
