Why USC Is Failing to Meet Recruiting Expectations | College Football Enquirer

Yahoo Sports national columnist Dan Wetzel and senior college sports writer Ross Dellenger are joined by Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde to discuss head coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans’ recruiting woes as they enter the Big Ten this season. Listen to the full conversation on the “College Football Enquirer” podcast — and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

We had a whole group of guys at the beginning of last month.

They lost 25 star defensive players from Georgia, four star defensive players from Jacksonville and, uh, Juju Lewis, their star quarterback, who traveled across the country.

If you’re an American, you can’t really feel good about this recruiting situation.

You’ve got Lincoln Riley on your team, you’re heading to the Big 10 and now you’ve got all this Big 10 money and you’re not paying alimony like UCL A. Oh, that’s fascinating.

That’s because I think we’ve all been waiting for Lincoln Riley.

He’s completely crushing us.

That’s right, you know, one of the things that might be a strategic flaw here is that they’ve been attacking the southeast heavily.

If you want to get into security, it’s hard to get them when the pressure comes back at the end, hey, you know, we can do this for you, we can do that for you.

You can stay home, you can play in the SEC.

It’s hard for a lot of these guys to refuse given USC’s location in California.

You would think that they could do very, very well with recruits that they could actually keep there.

You know, I wonder if this isn’t a case where the reach is beyond your reach.

This is certainly some interesting and unexpected turbulence for Lincoln.

A few stories have been told about us, the CS nil Collective.

Some parents have publicly expressed disappointment, perhaps over the payments or lack thereof.

We’re going to go back to the Nile era and these promises that were broken and this is one place where that apparently happened.

A lot of kids in California don’t commit to us.

You were the one who wanted the program to come out with a bang and a lot of momentum.

Oregon enters the Big 10 with a lot of momentum.