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Paolo UggettiESPN
Just more than 24 hours after Southern California announced that former 5-star quarterback Caleb Williams would be joining Lincoln Riley in leaving Oklahoma for Los Angeles, Riley introduced a signing-day class that featured Williams among 13 transfer players while admitting he did not want to rely on the transfer portal as much as he had.
“This is a unique year and a unique situation,” Riley said. “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.”
As USC pulled in players from Oklahoma to Alabama and Colorado to round out their roster during a year of transition, Riley acknowledged that USC had benefited greatly from the portal. Yet he was also quick to point out that, going forward, he prefers a more balanced class with more high school players than transfers, in part because of how he feels about the nature of the transfer process.
“There’s really no guardrails, a player can leave 365 days a year, if they choose,” Riley, who is one of the many coaches who have also switched programs at a moment’s notice, said. “That’s just part of how it is right now. You can’t predict all of that, and you can almost drive yourself crazy.”
Riley says one advantage of recruiting players in the portal is they are easier to evaluate because there’s film of them playing against college players. The relationship part of the equation, however, is trickier given that new partnerships have to be formed and cemented under the duress of an accelerated timeline.
“You grow up being used to recruiting player for one year or two years,” Riley said. “And all of a sudden, some of these things are happening in a matter of days, or even a matter of weeks.”
When it came to re-recruiting Williams, NCAA rules prevented contact between Riley and Williams as soon as he accepted the USC job. Once Williams made the decision to enter the portal, Riley reached out shortly after. According to Riley, the familiarity with him and his staff, as well as the opportunities USC provided Williams, both on and off the field, led him and his family to make the decision. On Friday, Williams enrolled at USC.
Williams headlines a USC class that also includes his former teammates, wide receiver Mario Williams and cornerback Latrell McCutchin, as well as Oregon running back Travis Dye, and linebackers Shane Lee and Romello Height from Alabama and Auburn respectively.
“At the end of the day, nobody’s really going to ask how,” Riley said. “It’s, did you put together the best roster that gives us the best chance to accomplish what we came here to do.”
Part of that goal, for USC, includes leveraging their location into opportunities for players. If the portal has become a source of frenzy around college football, then name, image and likeness has only added kerosene to the fire as different kinds of deals at programs all over the country have emerged.
“I think the real surge has happened now as recruiting has gotten competitive,” Riley said of NIL. “It’s a factor and anybody that says it isn’t is not paying attention … I think it’s going to continue to be another way that we as a program can separate ourselves. And we absolutely plan to do that.”