If you want to recruit against USC, it helps to have California connections.

Alabama picked up a huge commitment this weekend, flipping 5-star dual-threat QB Bryce Young from USC to the Crimson Tide. Young’s parents aren’t shy about naming an MVP in the flip: offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian.

“Alabama really wasn’t on our radar,” Young’s father, Craig, told AL.com’s Matt Zenitz, “but it intensified again when Coach Sarkisian came back to the program and became the offensive coordinator.”

Zenitz goes on to detail that Sarkisian had been following Young since 2014, a time when Sark was USC’s head coach and Young was just in middle school.

That established familiarity helped Sarkisian make a pro-Alabama recruiting pitch to Young and his family.

“The system was Coach Sarkisian’s primary focus (with his recruiting pitch),” Young’s father told Zenitz. “To his credit, he didn’t do any negative recruiting or talking about what USC was or was not or how Alabama stacked up to SC or anything like that. We didn’t talk much about SC at all. It was more about the system, how the system is so similar to what Bryce runs at Mater Dei, how important it is to have a multiple system — a system where you use the tight end, you go under center sometimes and have different formations and different protections — and how that can prepare you for the next level if Bryce is so blessed to be able to do that. Those are the things that were really important and resonated with us.”

More details of Young’s recruitment, including what he did on his Alabama visit, can be found in the full AL.com article.

Featured image via @_bryce_young on Twitter