Lincoln Riley Addresses USC's Recruiting Efforts Ahead of Cal Matchup

Lincoln Riley is known as a solid quarterback recruiter. His programs have been highlighted by the talent he's brought in at the quarterback position. Funny enough, he managed to court one of the top quarterback recruits in the 2023 class, Malachi Nelson, out of Southern California, to play for him at Oklahoma prior to Riley taking the head coaching position at USC. Nelson then followed Riley to USC.

In a virtual press conference this past Thursday, The Athletic's Antonio Morales asked Riley what he thinks about the current state of USC recruiting and specifically how they're doing on the recruiting front, locally. Riley has this to say:

"In the last 15 years, there's been a better record than where we currently sit (6-2) only one time, which is last year. Which is amazing. There is definitely a rebuild and there's a process we're right in the middle of... I think we've made great progress and still clearly have a lot of work to do".

Riley then focused in on the USC "brand":

The brand and the USC degree, what it means how much people watch it, how much people care about it is still incredibly high. As far as recruiting whether it be national or local i mean to me it's kind of all in the same. It's how do you build the best roster you can out of the guys that are available to go recruit. Because at the end of the day, you can win a national championship and you have a roster mixed from all over the country, nobody's going to say 'aww well that's great, you won the national champioship but you don't have 80% local guys'. On the flip side, if we don't have a good year they're not going to say 'well, at least he has a bunch of California kids on his team'. You clearly have to do a great job locally but like I told you guys when I got here it's about getting the right guys. I think in my evaluation of the program when we got here and started looking at the roster, I think there were a lot of players from the state of California that, in my opinion, should not be on the USC roster for one reason or another. Hiding behind the curtain of 'Well, at least we're recruiting California kids' I don't think does the program any good. Yeah, we want to get California kids. We want to get local kids. We want them to be the right kids, the right kind of kids, right kind of students, right kind of players that fit within what we're building. Not ones that go against the grain of what we're building.

Riley suggested that with continued success, the USC brand should grow and that reaping the benefits of his current success may not instantly translate to recruiting success, but it would "happen as you go."

USC's 2024 recruiting class isn't currently as strong as Riley's inaugural 2023 class, and if one were to apply Riley's own logic, it's fair to expect USC to make a big push late in this cycle as the season winds down. However, the fact that USC is virtually eliminated from College Football Playoff contention may be something worth taking into account here.

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