Lincoln Riley shares longtime view as USC recruiting rival, why it led him to take job

When Lincoln Riley was at Oklahoma, he had some big-time recruits from the West Coast. Now at USC, his new mission is to keep them close to home.

And he knows how to do it, too.

Riley took over the job last month and got right to work on the recruiting trail. Since he knows the area, he has an idea of how to get those recruits to stay home. In fact, that was part of the allure to the job.

“I recruited this state for a long time,” Riley told reporters on National Signing Day. “We’ve been able to have a little bit of success recruiting it at some of the previous stops. But I always remember a sense in … this part of the country that when SC was good, it was going to be tough to beat. When SC wasn’t good, you were maybe going to have a chance to sign kids that maybe deep down wanted to go to SC and maybe the program just wasn’t where it needed to be or maybe where they felt like it was good enough to go.

“I always had that sense through all the years, and certainly that was a factor in ultimately taking this job, feeling like you can build one of the elite rosters in the country here. I would say now having been here for a few weeks, it’s still very early, you feel that sense. I feel like players in this part of the country … I still feel that. That deep down, the majority of players around here, they want to play at USC.”

Lincoln Riley on pitching USC to recruits: ‘Anybody associated with [the program], you have a hand in it’

Riley also went into his pitch to recruits to stay in California. It’s not like it can happen overnight. In fact, it’s a team effort — from the entire coaching staff and the administration.

He also called on the fans to buy in and help get those players to stay home.

“The flip side of it is USC has to give them a reason to want to follow through with [staying home], and that’s our job … as coaches, that’s our administration’s job, that’s our fans’ job,” Riley said. “Anybody associated with it, you have a hand in it, and if we all point in the same direction and we all push, do the things we need to do, we can create something here that I think’s going to keep a lot of the great talent in this part of the country right here.”

USC has the No. 4 recruiting class in the Pac-12 this cycle, according to the On3 Consensus Rankings, including one five-star recruit. Not all of them were recruited by Riley, but things are likely just getting started in the Lincoln Riley Era.