Former five-star USC recruit loses QB1 competition at Boise State

Where did it go wrong? Was it during the evaluation process? Was it picking the wrong school to begin with? Was it putting faith in a former recruiter who left for a bigger opportunity. What this has all culminated in is former five-star recruit Malachi Nelson will not be the starting quarterback for the Boise State Broncos in Week 1. Maddux Madsen just beat out the former USC Trojans third-stringer.

There is no need to bury the guy. We can only hope he will get his day in the sun to start for a major college football team at any level, Power Four, Group or Five or whatnot. To me, this is troubling on multiple accounts. I will unpack this shortly, but we need to start with this. Nelson was supposed to be Lincoln Riley's hand-picked successor at USC for Caleb Williams ... until he wasn't. This is so brutal.

Nelson initially committed to play for Riley at Oklahoma. While it made more sense for the Los Alamitos native to go play for the Trojans, it was odd to see him hit the portal this past offseason. He may not have usurped Miller Moss on the depth chart, but he was supposedly a Power Four player. Although Boise State is an elite Group of Five program, everybody thought he was going to win this.

ESPN's Pete Thamel reported the jaw-dropping news that Madsen was going to beat out Nelson.

Besides the recruiting system failing him, losing Bush Hamdan to the Kentucky job was even worse.

Malachi Nelson unable to beat out Maddux Madsen to be Boise State QB1

While Nelson did end up playing for Riley last season at USC, Hamdan was another recruiter Nelson grew fond of during the recruiting process. He was at his alma mater of Boise State last year, having coached at Missouri, Washington and the Atlanta Falcons recently as well. Hamdan is a well-respected offensive mind at the college level, but he left for Kentucky shortly after Nelson arrived.

This may have been purely coincidental, as Kentucky lost its offensive coordinator Liam Coen to the same role with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Kentucky is a step up in competition. Even though they may only be middle of the pack in the SEC this year, Mark Stoops is a helluva coach and their new quarterback in Georgia transfer Brock Vandagriff was a former five-star coming out of high school.

I think the fact that Hamdan left and recently promoted head coach Spencer Danielson remained removed a guy from Nelson's corner. This is not to say that Nelson and Danielson don't get along, but he was Hamdan's guy, and now he is gone. Also, the fact the Madsen played well down the stretch under Danielson when he was the interim head coach played a huge part in him winning the job.

Truth be told, it is hard to unseat a quarterback who helped an interim coach win his conference.