Lincoln Riley shares challenges of evaluating character in the transfer portal

Few first-year coaches had as much success as Lincoln Riley did at USC in 2022, winning 11 games and finishing right on the cusp of making a College Football Playoff appearance.

Riley has very quickly rebuilt the program culture, something he’s been able to do even in the world of the NCAA transfer portal, when you’re adding dozens of players to your roster each year from other programs. Riley revealed his main key to evaluating who to take in the transfer portal following the team’s annual spring game.

“How we’ve managed the locker room, the vibe from within, I think has been we’ve been very honest with these transfers about what we’re building, how we’re building it, what’s expected from this end, what those guys are walking into and knowing if that doesn’t fit what the transfer really wants or is about then we encourage him to not come here,” Riley said.

“And has that cost us some guys that we liked their on-field evaluation? Absolutely it has. But we can live with that. We’re making that the priority.”

USC has not been shy about raiding the transfer portal.

So far this offseason the Trojans have welcomed 11 transfers into the program, with some likely to make an immediate impact this fall. So how do Riley and his staff vet these potential transfers?

“First I would say every school and every situation is different,” Riley said. “Some of it is certainly the terms that they’re leaving on, or is it a school that you know other coaches or you’ve got relationships with their staff? Every one of them’s different, and that’s sort of the challenge.

“I think you can, once these guys get in the portal, between being able to talk to obviously the guys, hopefully their college coaches at some point, family or a high school coach or other people that they’ve worked with, I feel like you can get the information. And there’s probably another line of it because they’ve been in college, so that’s an advantage.”

There’s only so much you can do in evaluating transfer portal prospects on a short timeframe, but Riley has encouraged potential transfers to get on campus so they can get a better feel for things.

That allows more of a two-way evaluation.

“It helps being able to get these transfers on campus and let them interact with our guys,” Riley said. “We’ve tried to pair them up as far as like the recruiting hosts and all that with guys that know what we’re about and know what we’re trying to bring in in terms of the character and the kind of guys in the locker room that really they see the individual opportunity but they really want to be a part of what we’re building here.

“Obviously being able to get that feedback from those players has been very helpful as well. We’ve just said if we feel uneasy about that in any way that we’re going to go a different direction, and we’ve stuck to that and I think that’s helped us.”

Make no mistake about it, though. It’s a tricky dance, a fine line that has to be woven to make sure you’re actually helping your program when mining the transfer portal.

“The biggest thing with the portal is the time crunch,” Riley said. “It just happens typically really, really, really fast. And there’s no going out (to them), especially this time of year you can’t go out and see them unless they’re on your campus. I mean there’s no face-to-face contact, and the timeline puts a crunch on it.”