WATCH: Eli Manning attempts to join USC's Club 55
It seems Eli Manning has gotten the itch to step back onto the football field – and wants to do so by joining the USC Trojans‘ infamous Club 55. Willie McGinest, a member of Club 55, decided to teach him the ropes.
Within the group resides some of the all-time great linebackers in Trojans history, including Israel Ifeanyi, Chris Claiborne, Markus Steele, Keith Rivers and Lamar Dawson. Most famously, NFL Hall of Famer Junior Seau donned the jersey as well, and is known as the original No. 55, despite others wearing the number before him. He set the standard – and Eli Manning didn’t live up to it.
“Do I remind you of any other 55’s?” Manning asked.
“Maybe some 55-year olds,” McGinest responded.
McGinest made sure to remind Eli not to quit the Manningcast when asked where or not he made it into Club 55. It’s safe to say he won’t be joining any time soon.
Lincoln Riley describes how he has rebuilt USC’s culture with so many new faces
USC head coach Lincoln Riley is nearing the end of his first fall camp with the Trojans. The main purpose of fall camp is to prepare a team for the upcoming season, but Riley also understands the importance of team camaraderie, especially for him considering it’s a large bulk of his team’s first season with the Trojans. On a roster full of transfers and new faces, Riley emphasized the importance of camp outside of the white lines.
“Camp helps reveal those things, camp is a lot of times our favorite time of the year because it’s the most time you spend together other than when you travel to games because there’s no school and those guys are with you darn near the entire day for two or three weeks. So I thought camp was a fun way for guys to get together and not just do the football part of it, but spend time getting to know one another. We’ve done things as a team, activities, we’ve done things within our own position rooms to build that. I’ve said it a bunch, it’s not gonna be a crutch for us,” Riley said.
Riley knows that the closeness of his players will only elevate their play, as he and his staff push to create that fellowship.
“It is what it is, we know it’s competitive, and we know it’s a competitive advantage for us to really grow together as a team and we’ve gotta make the most of the time and then as coaches and staff it’s our job to do the little creative things to put them in positions to do that and we’ve tried to do that as much as we can here,” Riley said.
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Riley was also asked what the biggest areas of growth have been since his arrival all the way to now in regards to to team chemistry.
“The biggest areas of growth have been the relationships within the team, I think when you’re around this team you don’t really feel like it came together the way it did, which is a positive thing. It feels like a lot of these guys have been together for multiple years. You see the camaraderie and the big thing I look for is we don’t have a bunch of cliques right now, which this doesn’t need to be like some fourth grade classroom right? Guys need to get to know one another, get out of their comfort zones, learn to rely on each other because we’re all gonna need each one of us,” Riley said.