Eric Musselman: New USC staff lived together in ‘portal house’ for 30 days

When Eric Musselman arrived at USC with no roster and no current house, he and the coaching staff piled into a bachelor pad on the beach to get cranking on their transfer portal work.

At an offseason press conference, Musselman revealed the process for getting out to Los Angeles and hitting the ground running in the portal despite barely having settled in.

“You know, probably the smartest thing we did is we rented a house for the first month in Manhattan Beach with our whole staff,” revealed Musselman. “Stayed in it, guys were in bunk beds, and we called it the Portal House. I mean Michael (Musselman) and (Anthony) Ruta were in bunk beds. This wasn’t a frat house, but it was a Portal House.”

In the Portal House, film breakdowns were fair game at all hours of the night and the fellas dined like they were on a west-coast vacation.

“We literally — it’d be like midnight and I’d say ‘Hey, what about that guy from so and so college?’ It’d be like 12:30 at night and Coach Conroy stayed in. It was pretty fun. Just crushing Bowling Green tape at like 2:00 a.m., eating every meal together. None of us cooked, so we ate out every single meal for a full 30 days.”

Not every coach could manage the full 30-day transfer portal bender, and Musselman admitted that “we did have some guys bail on us” as the month progressed. Apparently, he says not everybody is into those 2:00 a.m. film sessions.

The new USC coach was then asked how much work was done while in the house, and Eric Musselman said pretty much every commitment came through while he was there.

“Most everyone, yeah I think we were,” he answered when asked, then joking that the offseason getaway could become a tradition.

“Now that I’m thinking about it, yeah, this sounds like this could be a thing. That’s a great one, sure my wife would love it. Move out during the portal. She wouldn’t like the rent of what that house was, but that’s a hell of an idea. Yeah, I think it works. I can’t wait to go tell the staff: ‘New idea, we’re all moving out of our current spots, we’re going straight to a Portal House until we get a completely new roster.”

And why not? It certainly worked in 2024.