Lincoln Riley, creative with his offenses and with his similes.
Wrapping up the final preseason week of camp before transitioning into game-week mode for USC’s Sept. 1 opener against LSU in Las Vegas, the Trojans’s third-year head coach on Thursday tried to articulate the evolution of his program’s ability to wade into the ever-deepening waters of Name, Image and Likeness recruiting waters.
“I’ve talked a lot about our NIL and how it’s evolved,” Riley told reporters via Zoom. “Yeah, certainly, we’re about to be more aggressive with high school guys than we’ve ever been with it. That’s because our NIL has gotten a whole lot better.
“You don’t want to be going to a gunfight with a knife, and in the beginning we were going to a gunfight with like a toy sword. So, we’re definitely … we’ve made a lot of progress, those folks have done a great job and I think some of it, too, just our strategy and I’ve talked about this some, just our strategy on how many high school guys we’re taking, who we’re taking, what we’re targeting has changed drastically.”
After Riley bounced from Oklahoma to USC mere hours after his last-ever game atop the Sooners ended in an 37-33 loss to heated rival Oklahoma State, his inaugural USC recruiting class was fueled with high-profile additions from the NCAA Transfer Portal.
Those notably included quarterback Caleb Williams from Oklahoma and wideout Jordan Addison from Pitt.
Overall, Riley’s first USC recruiting class in 2022 was tabbed as the No. 70 group in the 247Sports Composite, the industry standard.
The last two years have seen USC post the Composite No. 8 and No. 17 classes, respectively.
Riley pointed to a more stable roster that has been designed to lean more into high school recruiting than Portal free agency.
“We have really shifted, as I’ve told you we were going to, we have really shifted not completely away from the Portal, I don’t think we’ll ever be completely away from it,” Riley said, “but you just look at our, you can just look at the numbers, we’re headed to becoming the developmental program that we want to be long-term for the next 10 or 15 years.
“With that there’s been more high school recruiting; there’s going to continue to be more. The high school recruiting takes longer, it’s not as fast and furious as Portal recruiting. A lot of times you have to relationships that are developed for multiple years and having some of the consistency that we’ve had on certain parts of our staff for a long time now makes a difference on that as well. So, it’s become a bigger part of what we’re doing each and every year here and that’s going to continue to happen. And as long as our NIL continues to climb, we’ll continue to be as aggressive there as we need to be.”
Earlier this week, as both FootballScoop and 247Sports first reported, USC missed out on hiring away Alabama general manager Courtney Morgan into a similar top-line executive personnel role at USC. Numerous sources told FootballScoop that USC had offered Morgan a multi-year deal worth seven figures annually, but he stayed with Kalen DeBoer at Alabama for an $800,000 three-year pact.
Riley didn’t directly address Morgan but said college football’s ongoing evolution – Portal, NIL, impending revenue-sharing – keeps the emphasis on well-staffed and developed off-the-field troops.
“I think certainly these off-the-field types of roles have gotten more popular, they’ve become more valuable as time has went on,” Riley said. “That started a long time ago, whether it’s people in player development or a recruiting staff or a personnel staff, I mean, look at all these programs 10 years ago, five years ago and look at them now. I see no reason, given the fact that all these things that have changed, they’re going to continue to grow, these support staffs are continuing to get bigger.”
Riley again pointed to the impact that freedom of player movement – the Portal – and the relatively new ability for players to earn off their images for marketing and other opportunities as drivers in the off-the-field staff growth.
“The Portal has changed a lot; obviously NIL and upcoming rev-share have changed things a lot,” he said. “The way that recruiting has evolved has changed a lot. The uptick in having a really good player development director or staff has changed a lot, and those have all been good things for the game. I think those staffs are going to always continue to evolve. It’s been great to have Jim and Jay (Hilbrands) from an administrative side, it’s great to have Dave (Emerick) on our side who’s been a part of this at many other staffs, has been a chief of staff, really when he worked for Coach (Mike) Leach, that was the big deal that he was in charge of was building staffs. Researching kind of the different trends, in NFL and college, how the staffs have evolved. Right there, I’ve just got three people that I can really rely on to not only look at what we’re doing now but to plan for the future.
“We’re trying to live in the present and be present and think ahead, whether it’s hiring staff members or how we’re outfitting the new facility, we’re trying to be forward-thinking and fortunate to have three people really right here that are right here with us really thinking of that and spending a lot of time on that on a daily basis and I’m sure we’re going to continue to evolve.”