For those college football fans digging in their heels against the lure of year-round high school recruiting, 2015 is the year you must give in to your temptations. If you want 10 win seasons, big time bowl games, respect for your Pac-12 University by the national media, and maybe just maybe a playoff invite your civic duty as a fan starts on National Signing Day.

Five and four star levels doubters of recruiting services there are not one but two shiny metaphors for you to digest. If you are playing poker would you rather start your hand with four aces or go into battle with a pair of twos in your hand? When building your dream car do you want to head to the garage stock full of Ferrari engines and parts or would you prefer to start building with old Dodge minivan scraps?

Getting five and four star recruits to sign letter intents to your school are the building blocks to conference championship game appearances and 10-win seasons. Coaches and school want Aces in their back pocket and Ferraris on the field.

The inspiration for a Pac-12 centric look at recruiting came from an excellent article by Matt Hinton over at SB Nation site Football Study Hall.

The premise of Hinton's article is that in head-to-head match-ups over a four span schools dubbed as "five star" recruiting hot spots will have a better winning percentage versus their four star and below counter parts. The numbers do not lie. Five and four star recruiting level programs tend to horde the majority of elite high school talent coming into college.

Over the 2010-2013 year span the 75 teams labeled on his five through one star scale by Hinton played each other head-to-head 1,488 times. Here are the results of those games, with winning records in black and losing records in red:

Below, pulled from Hinton's post, are the 75 teams he rated trough his star system. Pac-12 schools are in bold. USC due to recruiting sanctions were not listed. From 2010-2013 USC was rated the first, first, second, and second Pac-12 school in terms of team rankings per 24/7 Sports. Safe to assume USC falls within the five-star elite when they are running on all cylinders.

'Big Six' Conference Teams by Recruiting Class
• FIVE-STAR: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas.

Note that, since 2003, the eleven teams in the "five-star" group have combined for 21 appearances in the BCS Championship game, compared to one appearance by any of the 64 teams listed below. (The lone exception in that span, Oregon, just barely missed the cut for five-star status.) The only "five-star" teams that never played for a title in the BCS era are Georgia and Michigan; among the rest, only Notre Dame failed to make a repeat trip.

• FOUR-STAR: Arkansas, California, Clemson, Miami, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ole Miss, Oregon, Penn State, South Carolina, Stanford, Tennessee, Texas A&M, UCLA, Virginia Tech, Washington.

• THREE-STAR: Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisville, Maryland, Michigan State, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, TCU, Texas Tech, Vanderbilt, Virginia, West Virginia.

• TWO-STAR: BYU, Cincinnati, Colorado, Georgia Tech, Houston, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, N.C. State, Northwestern, Purdue, South Florida, Utah, Washington State, Wisconsin.

• ONE-STAR: Boise State, Boston College, Central Florida, Connecticut, Duke, Iowa State, Kansas State, Memphis, SMU, Syracuse, Temple, Wake Forest.

The Pac-12 turns out to be a pretty balanced conference when it comes to recruiting strength. Colorado, Utah, and Washington State are looking for gems. Arizona, Arizona State, and Oregon State have the potential to rise or fall a level depending on who is coaching them. Oregon is slowing morphing into a five-star program while California and Washington's former coaching staffs, Jeff Tedford and Steve Sarkisian, had the ability to attract top notch athletes.

For every feisty Kansas State or Wisconsin out there exists an Oregon or Ohio State level program waiting to crush their hopes and dreams. The Pac-12 version of those hard-nosed programs may prove to be Utah after their impressive 2014 run. On the other hand the California Golden Bears brought in a ton of talent from 2010-2013 but were unable to meet expectations.

Pac-12 in the BCS era

In the BCS era modern recruiting rankings really started to be tracked online and with accuracy in 2005. 2005 marked four recruiting cycles after Scout joined Rivals in rating players. ESPN and 24/7 Sports would later join the business of ranking and rating high school football recruits.

Since 2005 let’s take a look at how, using the final BCS standing, a four team playoff would play out and the number of Pac-12 teams that would get invited to a New Year's Six Bowl game. Note the number of five and four star rated teams make the "big show". The velvet rope is strong in college football

• -2005 College Football Playoff

USC vs. Ohio State

Texas vs. Penn State

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

#5 Oregon (10-1)

• -2006 College Football Playoff

Ohio State vs. LSU

Florida vs. Michigan

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

#5 USC (10-2)

• -2007 College Football Playoff

Ohio State vs. Oklahoma

LSU vs. Virginia Tech

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

#7 USC (10-2)

#11 Arizona State (10-2)

• -2008 College Football Playoff

Oklahoma vs. Alabama

Florida vs. Texas

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

#5 USC (11-1)

#6 Utah (12-0)

• -2009 College Football Playoff

Alabama vs. TCU

Texas vs. Cincinnati

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

#7 Oregon (10-2)

• -2010 College Football Playoff

Auburn vs. Stanford

Oregon vs. TCU

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

Non-available closest was #19 Utah (10-2)

• -2011 College Football Playoff

LSU vs. Stanford

Alabama vs. Oklahoma State

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

#5 Oregon (11-2)

• -2012 College Football Playoff

Notre Dame vs. Oregon

Alabama vs. Florida

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

#6 Stanford (11-2)

#13 Oregon State (9-3)

• -2013 College Football Playoff

Florida State vs. Michigan State

Auburn vs. Alabama

*Pac-12 teams with a shot at New Year's Six Bowl game*

#5 Stanford (11-2)

#10 Oregon (10-2)

#14 Arizona State (10-3)

Cue collective Pac-12 freak out in 3, 2, 1…..in nine hypothetical BCS playoff seasons the Pac-12 got represented in the four team field just four times. The only Pac-12 teams to make it to the upper echelon of college football were USC, Oregon, and Stanford. West Coast biases aside for the pound for pound number two college football conference over the last handful of seasons that is a completely unacceptable number of shots at the big time.

For the hypothetical (and somewhat magical) scenario of a BCS playoff existing for the last nine years the number of four-star or below programs to get an invite is beyond small. Of the 35 available slots in the "BCS Playoff" from 2005-2013 only five went to three-star programs.

With the University of Arizona earning a Fiesta bowl berth in 2014, only California, Colorado, UCLA, Washington and Washington State have gone the last ten years without a " New Year's Six Bowl game" shot.

The rich are getting richer and the only way to stop them is on the recruiting trail!

The Blue-chip Pac-12 programs

Last year SB Nation's Bud Elliot did an in-depth study of Blue-chip recruits, five and four star rated, versus percentage of non blue chip recruits a school had on their roster over a four year period. Again, every national champion since 2002 has come from one of the 11 blue-chip programs earmarked by Elliot. The only Pac-12 school to make list was USC.

Oregon checked in at in 'the next six" category of blue-chip programs. Despite sanctions and coaching turn over the USC brand still has attracted blue-chip talent to campus. Now running at full capacity USC is projected to land one of the three best recruiting classes in the 2015 cycle.

Elliot says "After the recent run of solid coaching hires in the Pac-12, more of a premium will be placed on recruiting than ever before. And that could spell trouble for some staffs, as the talent west of the Rockies is somewhat limited. If all of these great coaching staffs win a few battles each, it will mean that the top programs in the conference get fewer elite kids."

Below is a chart from the Pac-12 portion of the article.

-Percentage of Blue Chip recruits

Team| % | '13-14 v. '11-12

USC: 64%-Up 12%

Oregon: 41%-Down 7%

UCLA: 41%-Up 40%

Stanford: 39%-Down 3%

California: 23%-Down 34%

Washington: 22%-Up 3%

Arizona State: 12%-Up 10%

Utah: 8%-Down 10%

Arizona: 7%-Up 6%

Washington State: 2%-Even

Oregon State: 2%-Even

Colorado: 1%-Down 2%

64 percent of USC's roster is made up of blue-chip players. The third column features the percentage up or down a program as gone in the last four years of recruiting blue-chip players; 2011 and 2012 versus 2013 and 2014 recruiting classes. UCLA has taken an amazing jump from one percent of their roster being made up of blue-chip players to 41%.

California on the other hand has fallen off a cliff, where it was once a four-star program attracting high end recruits, the Bears have come back down a full 34% over the last four recruiting cycles.

So how does the Pac-12 continue to earn national respect and bigger New Year's Six Bowl game payouts? The answer includes top flight coaching, elite quarterback play, and athletic defenses, but it starts with recruiting. How do the other 10 Pac-12 schools avoid the nightmare scenario of having to watch USC play Oregon in the conference championship game for the next decade? This answer also includes top flight coaching, elite quarterback play, and athletic defenses, but it starts with recruiting.

Every Pac-12 team has hope for fulfilling their own personal dream season through recruiting. Whether you are a sleeping giant, California and Washington, or rising blueblood, UCLA and Stanford, the potential is there for the conference as a whole to rival the SEC despite the latter's rich recruiting grounds.

With USC, Oregon, UCLA, Arizona State, Washington, and Stanford all currently eyeing top 25 recruiting class finishes, the time is now for the best conference west of the Mississippi to grab a hold at the SEC's brass ring and carry the momentum built on National Signing Day into the 2015 football season.