Musings from Arledge: Get Ready! It’s Crazy Time

We haven’t even reached the spring transfer portal window yet, and already college football fans are going slightly insane. On the WeAreSC boards, we had panicked messages about a possible Bear Alexander transfer, then panicked messages about a mystery tragedy about to befall the USC program (which turned out to be the impending transfer of a USC defensive lineman not named Bear Alexander—thank heavens), and hopeful messages about a star defensive lineman from a major program possibly transferring to USC. And that’s just scratching the surface.

I’ll concede that the transfer portal in the age of free transfers and unchecked NIL is crazy. It’s almost like Christmas Eve in that you don’t know what presents Santa will give you—but only if on Christmas Eve Santa and the Bogeyman both came down the chimney together, one to give unexpected presents and the other to do unexpected damage by taking away things you wanted and were counting on.  

It’s pretty exciting, if I’m being honest. Stressful, sure. But after the Helton years, when the only excitement was how ugly the game would be and whether I could stay up until 1:30 am central time to watch the end of it, I’ll take the stress with my excitement. And the excitement is certainly good for the message boards, even if it’s not good for older fans’ hearts.  

But as I read the message boards, it’s clear now that I’ve been absent too long and have failed to do my job. The fan base has become unruly and a little bit off-kilter.  There’s too much fear.  Too much whining.  So let’s bring some logic and level-headedness to the coming craziness.  Ready?

USC will lose players in this transfer portal—and probably not just the three that have already leaked their intentions. USC will lose more. Almost every program will lose people. It’s just the nature of the game now. Santa-Bogeyman week is coming. The house will look a lot different when they’re done.

But before panicking—and some of those message board posts were a little embarrassing with the level of panic in them—just keep in mind at all times that football is the ultimate team sport, a game with a couple of dozen starters per team where one player seldom carries the team. Even a superstar quarterback generally can’t (as we saw last year), although that’s one position where the loss of a key player can be devastating. But elsewhere? Even the loss of very good individual players often results in a tolerable drop off. Next man up!  

And even before transfer-mania hit college football, this was a game where you never really knew who you would have on the field.  Remember, football is a game of injuries. You never know which players you are going to lose during a season, but you know you will lose some. Football is, and always has been, a game of numbers. The key to a healthy program is not any single player. The key is to have lots of depth with lots of good players at every position and a coaching staff that has them prepared. If you have that, you’re likely to have success. One individual player is not the key to anything.

So, for USC, the coming craziness of players coming and going is a good thing.

Yes, there may be players that USC will lose that the coaches would prefer to keep. But—hear me on this—most of the players that leave a program like USC are leaving for a reason, and it’s usually a pretty good reason, both for the player and for the program.

For USC’s roster to improve, USC has to add players that are better than the players on the current roster. That seems obvious, no? And that means that when players are buried on the depth chart and are interested in finding a new landing spot where they can play, USC might, in many cases, leave the exits clear so to speak, if not actually help the player pack their things.   

Even where USC is losing players that it would probably like to keep — Jason Zandamela is probably an example, although I have no inside information — the program will be fine.  You heard it from Lincoln Riley, who didn’t seem worried; he said this is a young guy who is a long ways from contributing on Saturdays. That’s the right attitude. Even if you think that Zandamela would have become a very good offensive lineman in the future (and I think he would have), the question is whether you can replace him before the date comes that you would have needed him. And the answer is: of course. This isn’t a generational talent. This isn’t a hole in the roster for the upcoming season. It’s a guy who will likely become a good football player in the future. Now USC needs to go find another one for the future.  I suspect they will.

Why? Because USC is better positioned to find players in the transfer portal right now than it’s ever been before. Lincoln Riley has obviously had some transfer-portal success in prior years. But this is a USC program that has real recruiting momentum because, for the first time, it combines a first-rate coaching staff—you’re a Badger now, Mister Grinch (sing it; you know you want to)—with a competitive NIL program, both because of its better funding and because, as a result of the court ruling in the Tennessee case, USC is no longer doing NIL with one hand tied behind its back while other programs drop bags of cash and kilos of cocaine on recruits’ doorsteps. (I’m not sure about the cocaine bit, but I’m assuming Miami is being true to its Paul Dee-era history.) Combine a solid NIL program with a great coaching staff and all the other things that USC has to offer—location, history, academics—and you’re talking about a potent combination.  

When things are right at USC, there aren’t more than a couple of programs in the country that can match its potential.

This means that USC is set to make a major splash in the upcoming transfer portal. I don’t know who they’ll land. I’m not offering inside information. I’m just saying that the pitch USC has to make to transfers is a compelling one and much better than what they’ve been able to make in the past couple of years. So don’t freak out every time some USC player is leaving. Even the loss of Bear Alexander (or Zachariah Branch or Jonah Monheim) could be overcome, as much as it would sting. But the guys USC has lost thus far and is likely to lose in the next couple of weeks? Come on. USC is highly likely to find transfers who are just as good if not better.

So stop whining. You sound like the Bruins after their handicap placards were taken away. At the end of the transfer portal, USC’s roster will be better—probably substantially better—than it is right now. Let the process run its course.

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If you have questions you want answered about USC football, college football in general, pop culture, history, or anything else, drop it in the comments on the message board.  Serious questions are always welcome.  So are outlandish questions.  Some of these I will answer in a written Musings.  Some of them we will answer on Inside the Trojans Huddle.  Don’t let me down; give us some good questions.