Lincoln Riley explains recruiting ideology of local talent

One of the yearly primary storylines for any college program is on the topic of recruiting in-state prospects and ‘putting a fence up’ around the home territory. This is especially true for the University of Southern California, and reasonably so as California, and the greater Los Angeles area specifically, is home to some of the nation’s elite talents year in and year out.

The Trojans began to struggle holding onto to some of the local talent before Lincoln Riley arrived in late 2021. Since arriving, there has been a cry among the Trojan faithful to see the recruiting dominance of the state return under Riley.

Well, on Thursday, during Riley’s media zoom call, he dished out his thoughts and ideology on USC’s recruiting, the brand, and how he views recruiting the state of California.

Based on his answer on the state of program’s recruiting, it is clear Riley is confident the best is yet to come.

“The brand and the USC degree, what it means, how much people watch it, how much people care about it, is still incredibly high,” Lincoln Riley said. “The exciting thing, is I think we’re still on the beginning stages of this from a recruiting standpoint and what it can be and that’s what’s fun. I think we can go toe-to-toe with anybody right now and I don’t think we’re even at our best yet. I think when we get to our best, we’re going to be pretty tough to beat.”

Riley is confident in his and his staff’s ability to recruit, whether that be local or national. But at a program like USC, the fan base is going to expect a bit of a premium on the hometown talent and keeping in-state talent from leaving to go across the country.

Riley agrees with this thought but added he is not interested in recruiting the state just for the sake of saying he is recruiting the state. He also adds that the recruiting and roster building prior to his arrival was not on par with what he feels is worthy of USC’s brand.

“You clearly have to do a great job locally but like I told you guys when I got here, it’s about getting the right guys,” Riley said.

“I think in my evaluation of the program when we got here and started looking at the roster, I think there were a lot of players from the state of California that, in my opinion, should not be on the USC roster for one reason or another. So, hiding behind the curtain of, ‘Well, at least we’re recruiting California kids,’ doesn’t do the program any good.”

Winning Cures All

Something else Riley added for context on the outside discussion of the players he and his staff is recruiting is simply that winning cures all. If he and his staff are producing wins on the field and competing at a high level, there will likely not be any critiques from the outside.

“At the end of the day, if you go win the national championship and you have a roster mixed from all over the country, nobody’s going to say, ‘Ah, well, that’s great you won a national championship but you don’t have 80% local guys,’” Riley said. “The flip side is if you don’t have a good year, they’re not going to say, ‘Well, at least he has a bunch of California kids on this team.”

Riley made sure to add that recruiting the state and local areas are important. But they are not everything. He is more paying attention to the recruit on an individual basis and what they bring to the table, not just where they are from.

“Yeah, we want to get California kids,” he said. “We want to get local kids. We want them to be the right kids, the right kind of kids, right kind of students, right kind of players that fit within what we’re building. Not ones that go against the grain of what we’re building.”