Completely agree. Many, many kids want to leave the nest and go away to school; they want the “college experience.” Totally understandable mindset. And, yes, California is big enough that kids can “go away to school” without leaving the state, or even the same metro area.
If you grow up in Riverside or San Bernardino County–where there are many top high school football recruits–you may be in the same basic metro area as LA, but you are still going away to school when you go to USC or UCLA (in part because the traffic makes those areas seem like a world away). If you are in the Central Valley of California (Fresno, Sacramento, etc.) you are most definitely going away to school when you attend any of the P5 California schools (these areas are hours away from those schools). The same is not true for a kid that attends Bingham High School and goes to the U of U.