This week, Riley may have done even more damage to the way he is viewed by his constituency. That’s because he may have just told a blatant lie to his fan base.
There’s no doubt that college football is the most tribal and regionally-driven sport in America. Though the expansion of conferences has taken some of the regionality out of the game’s DNA, there will always be a part of the sport and a segment of the fandom that values local products.
That’s why coaches at just about every school will at some point in their tenure talk about the importance of keeping nearby talent at home. And every time they bring up that talking point, their fans gobble it up.
This week, USC head coach Lincoln Riley was asked during his weekly Zoom call with the media about his philosophy of recruiting Southern California players given that a huge portion of his current recruiting class is from out of state. As expected, Riley gave the answer most USC fans would want to hear.
“I mean, recruiting California is and will always be incredibly, incredibly important to us,” he said. “And that’s always priority number one. That’s not going to change. And I’ve told you guys, my definition, our definition of recruiting California well has been the right guys, and I’m excited for our staff to continue to build relationships inside this state. Especially our defensive staff, because so many of those guys are obviously very new in a larger sense, but with a complete start over there.”
That statement has spurred some interesting debate among the people of Southern California. In fact, some high schools in the area are not backing up what Riley said.
Consider Mater Dei High School in Orange County for example. For decades, that program annually supplied USC with fantastic talent.
However, according to Luca Evans of The Orange County Register, of the 13 top Mater Dei recruits in the classes of 2025 and 2026, only three have scholarship offers from USC. What’s more, Evans reports that Mater Dei coaches say that USC has visited their campus just once since April when Raul Lara took over as head coach.
“[Mater Dei wide receivers coach James] Griffin emphasized there’s no sour grapes between USC and Mater Dei,” Evans writes. “But Monarchs coaches still expressed confusion as to why USC hasn’t worked to establish a more consistent presence there. Lara pointed to the SEC’s Alabama and Georgia, and Big Ten programs like Oregon, Penn State and Ohio State – all top-10 programs nationally – as schools that had recently visited campus multiple times.”
Currently, USC’s 2025 high school recruiting class has 22 members. Only four hail from California. Meanwhile, eleven members of that class call the Southeast or Texas home.
So why does that matter? After all, would USC fans be angry if a roster full of out-of-state players brought the Trojans a national title in the next four years? Certainly not.
What matters is that it looks like Riley is telling lies to his fan base by saying that recruiting California is his program’s “top priority”. And for a coach who doesn’t come off as the most genuine of figures in the first place, that’s not what he needs to do, especially during a time when he is just 1-3 in Big Ten games this season and 4-8 in his last 12 regular-season contests.
It would have been better for Riley to tell the truth. If his coaching staff has stronger ties to high school players in the Southeast or Texas, then he should just admit that he is trying to find the best players possible and that he’s leveraging the relationships that he and his coaching staff have cultivated during their careers.
He could have then gone on to say that he respects the talent in Southern California and that his staff hope to enhance their relationships with the local high school coaches and programs. That would have been a far more believable and genuine response to the question.
There are times when a coach has built up so much equity with his fan base that he can say whatever he wants and get away with it. That’s not the position Riley is in these days.
Instead, a growing portion of the fan base is turning cynical when it comes to the Trojans’ head coach who has failed to deliver the type of results that his fandom expected when he arrived. Thus, if there ever was a time for authenticity from Riley, it would be now.
Instead, Riley gave a statement that could be considered by many to be nothing more than a pile of bull excrement. In doing so, he opened himself up for even more criticism and questioning from a USC fan base that is more and more turning sour on its head coach.
