Musings from Arledge: USC makes a mistake with Xavier Griffin decision

Nobody is perfect, I guess.

USC has been making all the right moves of late – great assistant coach hires, great administrative hires, great NIL efforts, great focus on the loaded 2026 and 2027 classes. USC has been making big, important strides to regain its place at the top of the college football food chain.

And now they shoot themselves in the foot. No, that’s not strong enough. Now they take a shotgun, place it directly against their foot, and intentionally blow the whole thing off.

USC has decided that its commits have to be fully committed—no visits elsewhere, no waffling. If you’re committed, you’re committed. It’s Dabo rules now, as opposed to Pete Carroll’s approach of encouraging recruits to take their visits.

Ripples from this new strategy were first felt when Kohen Brown decommitted. He wasn’t ready to close his recruitment down, so USC let him go. It was a bold move, but not devastating. Kohen Brown is a good player and I liked him in the class. He’s also replaceable.

The question, as someone you all know asked me just after the Brown decommitment, is what happens when a really big fish wants to look around.

Now we know. They will cut loose their best and most important recruit.

From my perspective, they will cut off their nose to spite their face in order to enforce a rule that is probably wrongheaded in the first place.

Bill Belichick tells a story about when he was the defensive coordinator under Bill Parcells with the Giants. One day he started a defensive meeting with Lawrence Taylor absent. I doubt that was unusual; LT was apparently that kind of player. When Belichick told Parcells, Parcells had one question: “Why did you start the meeting without LT?”

Yeah, LT was late. So what? LT is the franchise.

Not every player must be treated alike. Yes, treating the stars differently can breed resentment and can encourage other players to slack off. But cutting LT because he shows up drunk and misses meetings also destroys your football team. It’s best not to destroy your franchise in the name of consistency.

If you want to enforce the rules with the Kohen Browns of the world, go ahead. But don’t do something dumb with Xavier Griffin. Elite guys play by different rules; just like elite guys get far more money than the other recruits. That’s just doing business in the real world.

Cutting Xavier Griffin loose will not destroy USC football. But this is a very bitter pill to swallow. USC might be losing its best and most important recruit. They might be cutting loose a future 55. And they’re doing it not because Griffin has been publicly waffling like JuJu Lewis and not because he says he’s going elsewhere. They’re doing it because he wants to take his trips—trips, I note, that often involve Griffin wearing USC gear and trying to take pictures while making the victory sign. Trips that have not, to this point, led to a Griffin decommitment. 

Why do that? Is the new policy so critical that you have to blow off your own foot to enforce it?

Hardly. In fact, it probably creates perverse incentives. USC is still recruiting another star linebacker in Talanoa Ili. USC hasn’t dropped him. Why? Because he hasn’t committed. So if you don’t publicly commit, you can take all of your visits. But if you commit and take visits, you get dropped. 

What does this tell a recruit? Don’t publicly commit. That’s the obvious lesson here. At least it is for the elite recruits. Not for the marginal guys. But there will always be space for Xavier Griffin. He doesn’t have to hurry and claim his spot. So don’t commit, take all your visits, and then commit—even if you’re sure you want to go to USC. 

And this runs counter to what USC is trying to accomplish, which is to get early commits and get the players in the class on campus and together as often as possible. Xavier Griffin’s early commitment to USC has been good for the program. Griffin talking up USC with other recruits is good for USC. It’s better for USC than Talanoa Ili’s refusal to commit early. But Ili is still welcome and Griffin is not.

I still like what Lincoln Riley and Chad Bowden have done lately. I still think USC will have a very good class. But not nearly as good as if Xavier Griffin were still part of it. Cutting him loose is a bad decision and a significant misstep. It’s time to rethink the new policy.