Lincoln Riley Defends Recruiting Oklahoma Players in Transfer Portal

USC football coach Lincoln Riley has been very active in the transfer portal since leaving Oklahoma and becoming the Trojans head coach in late November, landing 13 transfers since taking over the program.

Some of the notable players who Riley has acquired in the portal include former Sooners quarterback Caleb Williams, wide receiver Mario Williams and Latrell McCutchin. While Riley said it was tough to bring players from Oklahoma after spending five years as the team's coach, he said it is the decision of the players and their families to enter the portal. 

In an interview with Colin Cowherd, he argued that he didn't actually take players from his former program because of the existence of the portal.

“We didn’t take players from Oklahoma, we took players from the transfer portal,” Riley said. “Once a player gets in a portal and they are open to any school in the country, we would be crazy to not look at it and now help our football team."

“These are guys we recruited, we got to know their families. All of a sudden they were enough for us to take at Oklahoma but now we would not give them a chance just because we are at a new spot, that part never really made sense to me. These are players we feel like can help get our program to where it needs to be.”

While he's benefitted from the transfer portal this offseason, Riley recently stated that the rules around the popular tool that has helped restore numerous college programs around the country, and led to significant upheaval in others, needs to be changed.

“I think at some point we’ll have to put in some guardrails. … I think it’s difficult for players, difficult for coaches, difficult to build rosters," Riley previously told ESPN. 

During his interview on The Herd, he acknowledged the controversy surrounding the influx of transfers, but said that he has to work within the rules to build his USC program.

“There is the purist, the person that obviously loves football, in some ways maybe the fan of the game of you, maybe who the idea of how you would want to see it go,” Riley said. “But also there is the person here to do a job, and there is a person that has a set of rules and parameters to work within and you are going to do everything within those rules to help build your program... And, that’s what we have tried to do.”

USC finished the 2021 season 4–8 overall and 3–6 (fourth in the Pac-12 South) in conference play. The team fired former coach Clay Helton early in the season, eventually replacing him with Riley.