Musings from Arledge: Lincoln Riley and USC's signing day

On signing day, multiple news outlets reported that the University of Central Florida was targeting Lincoln Riley to be their new head coach and had reached out to Riley’s people. The news immediately struck me as implausible for myriad reasons that everybody reading this article could list. But it led to an interesting thought experiment. If we saw an announcement today that Lincoln Riley was headed to UCF and would be replaced by D’Anton Lynn, how would I feel?

The answer was: better. 

That’s not a good sign.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating that USC fire Lincoln Riley. That would be stupid for a variety of reasons, including that even USC can’t afford to do that with so many years left on his contract. And unlike the last regime, I don’t think the current situation is hopeless. Riley has made errors; I don’t trust his judgment at this point. (Not that anybody cares about that or should.) But there are some positive developments. USC is improving its NIL capabilities, has an incredible new football facility on the way, hired a very good defensive staff, and still has Lincoln Riley who—despite this year’s underwhelming offensive performance—has a better track record coaching college offenses than just about anybody. Things are not hopeless, and in light of the fact that Lincoln Riley is probably going to be here for some years into the future, I’d rather focus on areas of improvement rather than start a new “Carthago delenda est” campaign against Riley.

Still, I would have felt more hopeful if D’Anton Lynn replaced Lincoln Riley today, and that’s not something I would have expected to feel three years ago when Riley was hired. That hiring was seen as a coup. I expected top-five recruiting classes and a resurrection of the program. I thought USC had finally hit a coaching hire out of the park.

It’s hard to feel that way now. Whether the problem is Lincoln Riley or structural—and I think both are likely—it’s clear that USC is still light years from being an elite program. Elite teams don’t lose six games. When you do, six plays isn’t the problem; when you lose six games, you have lots of problems. 

Problem number one is that USC does not have a championship roster. They have a roster that should beat Maryland, obviously. But they don’t have a roster you can take to the Horseshoe with confidence. Everybody knows that USC absolutely needed to kill it in recruiting this offseason, both with the high school kids and in the transfer portal. If not, it’s hard to see why the coming seasons will look any different than the last two. 

And after today I can’t say we’re off to a rousing start.

The Jahkeem Stewart announcement partially salvaged what was turning into a nightmarish signing day. It was looking like Friday the 13^th Part XXII: Signing Day. It seemed that no matter how fast USC ran or in what direction they went, they kept running into Jason Vorhees with a machete. There just was no escape from the bad news; their bloody demise was inevitable. I fully expected more bad news from New Orleans. How could we not? 

Understand, I didn’t always feel that way. Back when USC was a main character—back in Pete Carroll’s day—I fully expected that USC would survive no matter how dark and foggy the night. After all, the protagonist never dies in a horror flick. 

But USC isn’t the protagonist in college football any more. USC is now a side character. USC is the stoner kid who lights up a joint at the beginning of the movie or the couple that sneaks off to have sex or the one black friend—you know, the characters that you can state with certainty will get offed by garden shears through the neck or a javelin through the belly. It’s just how horror films go; once you’ve seen a few, you can anticipate the script for every other one. Show me the character, and I’ll predict his death. And USC is playing different roles than it used to.

So while waiting for Stewart’s announcement, and knowing what I would have to write, I started thinking through possible analogies for signing day. I was thinking of a race car driver who is leading in the last lap and, just before the finish line, all four tires of his tires go flat, the engine throws a rod, the driver spontaneously combusts, and he is shot 83 times with blow darts by the tribesman from Indiana Jones. In other words, signing day looked just like the typical 2024 USC fourth quarter. Okay, okay, things are looking alright, I think we might just win this—Bam! You’re dead. 

But then Thanos pulled out his ugly gray USC hat and committed to the good guys! And that means signing day was just like what I described above except the car also exploded and catapulted the driver over the finish line just before his competitors could get there. The driver has a very light pulse and may not survive … but he won!

I liked that one. But it didn’t really work, because what did USC win? The Trojans just moved into the top 15 of the recruiting rankings. So here goes:

USC’s recruiting day was like the end of Tin Cup. The Trojans were trying to make the cut just to stay on the tour. But every shot was going in the lake. Water, water, water. The crowd groans, groans again, groans again. Things are going from disappointing, to awful, to almost funny. And then, just in the nick of time, he puts in the cup. He pulls a 13 on the last par five, like I do. He didn’t win anything, but he didn’t lose everything, either. There’s relief, but if you stop and think about it for more than a second, there’s also a whole lot of apprehension about the future for that guy. Anybody who crashes and burns and barely survives like that is a guy who will probably get in some more tight spots in the future, no?  

That’s USC’s signing day.

Let me stop just for a second and concede something important: landing Jahkeem Stewart is huge. Landing a guy that everybody in the world wanted from the deep south is no joke. It shows that USC has some NIL resources, that USC still has value to the right recruit, and that Coach Henne is worth whatever they’re paying him. You cannot be a great defense without at least one unblockable guy upfront. All the great defenses have at least one guy like that. We don’t know if Stewart will pan out; big-time recruits sometimes don’t. But you have to win recruiting battles like this to have a chance at a championship team. So landing Stewart was huge. 

But you can’t build a championship roster with one monster recruit, either. Aaron Donald won every award in 2013. His Pitt team went 7-6. This isn’t basketball; one guy doesn’t make you a contender. You need lots of good pieces in this sport.

Let me also concede that things aren’t over. These days, the transfer portal is almost as critical as high school signing day. USC presumably has some leftover NIL funds from the decommit pile; maybe it can bring in the next Woody Marks or Eric Gentry. Maybe it can salvage recruiting and give future teams a chance.

But make no mistake: this signing day is not how things were supposed to go. USC got some very good players in this class. The defensive line class is fantastic, and nothing is more important to a defense than a strong defensive line. The Trojans got their quarterback of the future (I think), some very promising wide receivers, some elite tackle prospects, a good running back….

It’s a class that has a lot of nice pieces. But it isn’t an elite class. It isn’t a championship class. The teams that compete for titles every year do not consistently finish around 15^th in the recruiting-class rankings. The teams that finish there fight to finish fourth in their conference and play in second-tier bowl games. The teams that consistently compete for titles and finish in the top five or six every year land top-five classes. 

And before you start arguing with me—La, la, la, Stars don’t matter! La, la, la, la, I can’t hear you! La, la, la—they do. Look at the recruiting rankings for Kirby Smart, Nick Saban, Pete Carroll, Urban Meyer, etc. And tell me how often they finished outside the top ten. A five-star ranking doesn’t guarantee that a kid will be great; some three-star recruits become All-Americans. But the stars matter. If you load your classes with elite prospects, there is a very good chance that your team will win most of its games on talent alone. If you don’t, you better be a magician of a coach. Lincoln Riley is not a magician of a coach.

I don’t know why USC can’t land better recruiting classes. It’s likely a cluster of factors, including NIL weaknesses compared to the elite recruiting programs, USC’s failures on the field for the last decade and a half, and maybe some less-than-stellar recruiting efforts by members of USC’s staff. Maybe recruits read what I write and run the other way. Maybe they’ve always longed for the prestige of an Oregon bachelor’s degree. Maybe they go to Norman because they can’t stand girls with all their teeth. Maybe they don’t like the DJ. Maybe they’re scared at USC games because the bodies in the seats are so silent and so still they must be corpses. I don’t know.  

But whatever the cause, it’s hard to argue the result. USC just landed a pretty decent class with a handful of really good prospects. Just like it did last year. And, unless things change, just like it will next year. But USC did not land a class that can compete with Ohio State, Oregon, Alabama, or Georgia. And that means Lincoln Riley is not doing what he said he would do: “We plan on building the best roster in the country, and within that locker room, the best culture in the country.” 

He hasn’t figured out how to do that yet. 

Maybe that’s his fault; maybe it’s NIL; probably it’s some him and some other things. Whatever the cause, he isn’t building the roster that he expected or we expected. And therefore he’s not building the championship program that he expected or we expected. Today was just another step down the same path. I suspect Lincoln Riley is getting tired of it. I know the rest of us are.