Shane Lee goes in-depth on how the culture has changed at USC under Lincoln Riley

Following last season’s disappointing 4-8 campaign, the USC Trojans were in need of a complete reset on and off the field. When USC hired Lincoln Riley as the team’s next head football coach, he immediately got to work on rebuilding the culture within the Trojans program.

One player who knows a thing or two about a strong culture is linebacker Shane Lee, who spent the last couple seasons at Alabama with Nick Saban. Now, Lee is explaining how Riley is bringing an awesome culture to USC.

“I wouldn’t say one area, I’d say really the culture,” started Lee, speaking on what Riley has brought to the program. “.. Believing in the brotherhood. Having trust in each other is the biggest thing for us. Schemes are great, and everybody has a skill. But culture .. we’ve really been working. It’s been amazing to be up here with these guys, and everybody else day-in and day-out. It’s hard, it’s not always fun — but it’s necessary. And it makes it easier when you have guys, you know they’re putting everything on the line every single day.”

Evidently, USC is going to be much different under Riley. Continuing, Lee elaborated on what Riley is looking for out of his athletes.

“Accountability, discipline, trust — things like that,” revealed Lee. “Core principles that we’re trying to build this foundation with. Accountability, making sure guys are going to class .. doing what they need to do, on and off the field. Making sure if somebody’s sleeping in, somebody’s calling them like yo, you know we got to lift. Things like that. Just the little things. Because everything matters. Like coach said, we’re not trying to leave any stone unturned, or look back and say I wish I would’ve. So, we’re trying to make sure everything is taken care of.”

Shane Lee learned from the best in Nick Saban, but Lincoln Riley is impressing the former Alabama linebacker in his first season at USC.

Caleb Williams explains how USC’s culture has changed under Lincoln Riley

Following USC’s spring game on Saturday, Trojans quarterbacks Caleb Williams joined Lee in going in-depth on how important Riley’s emphasis on leadership has been as the team has tried to rebuild the culture inside the program. To Williams, Riley has done a great job at instilling tiers of leadership.

“We’ve had a bunch of guys on this team that the previous year didn’t do so well,” Williams said. “We got guys on this team that want to win the ball, want to win big games. We’ve been doing that, we’ve been progressing and doing pretty well with that. But a big part of it is being coachable. Sometimes you just gotta eat, it, whatever it is, you gotta take it. Coach, I mean he might say something that you might not like. You gotta listen to what he says. I mean he is your coach. But also just the culture fact of these guys here, we have a leadership group.

“We meet every week or so and one of the biggest things is that elite teams are led by the players, held accountable by the players. Good teams, they’re led by the coaches, held accountable by the coaches. And the poor teams, there’s nobody that does that. We’ve been trying to be the elite team. So we’ve been having a lot of players step up into leadership roles, be more commanding, have a voice. But to have that, you have to work. And when you’re working hard, you build loyalty, you build trust, and then you have those moments where you can speak up, hold your other teammates accountable.”