Head coach Lincoln Riley described what has been a “unique year” of recruiting for USC football in his National Signing Day press conference on Wednesday. The Trojans have signed 13 transfer players, including former five-star quarterback Caleb Williams, who announced Tuesday he’d be rejoining his former coach at USC.
“The portal has been an advantage for us,” Riley said. “There’s really no other way to say it. When you’re trying to really revamp a roster and fill the amount of spots that we’re attempting to fill, being able to have all these different mechanisms to use to fill that has been extremely valuable.”
Riley said he’d prefer to take a more balanced approach between high school and transfer players when filling the roster in the future, but the need to overhaul the roster under a new staff required USC to rely on the portal. While it’s easier to evaluate players who have college film, Riley described the difficulty of building relationships with transfers given a shorter timeline.
With Williams and other former Oklahoma players that Riley re-recruited, NCAA rules forbade Riley from contacting the players between when he accepted the USC job and when they entered the portal.
When Riley could finally reach out to Williams, they initially didn’t talk “even one bit of football.” Riley described the conversation like “talking to a long-lost friend.”
“We took it step-by-step,” Riley said. “There were some things that he knew about myself and a lot of members on our staff, that he had a positive experience with, and then there’s a lot of new things with a new city, a new program, a new university. I think the biggest thing was making sure that this was going to be the right fit for us as a program and the right fit for him as far as his development as a player and for him as a student.”
Now that Riley has a break from the recruiting trail, USC has started training and installing the new staff’s offensive and defensive systems. Riley said leaders are already emerging — he mentioned transfers linebacker Shane Lee and running backs Austin Jones and Travis Dye — and the returning players have shown they are ready to compete. He expects USC to continue to be active in the portal throughout the spring and summer to fill out its roster.
With all of the recent additions in the transfer portal, Riley was asked if expectations are now heightened for the 2022 team.
“Our expectations will never change. You don’t bring in a staff like this and set the bar low,” Riley said. “The bar should never be low at USC. This is one of the best programs of all time.”