Lincoln Riley explains the unique experience of coaching so many older players

When the COVID-19 pandemic changed sports — and the world — the NCAA opted to give athletes who competed in the 2020-21 school year an extra year of eligibility. As a result, older athletes are staying in college, and Lincoln Riley called it a “silver lining” of the pandemic.

USC has 22 redshirt seniors on its roster, including three recruits from the class of 2017 and four players from the class of 2018 it added via the transfer portal. It’s quite an adjustment from having a lot of younger players on the roster, but Riley said some of those older players are stepping up as leaders.

One of them is Travis Dye, a transfer from Oregon who Riley specifically cited as someone taking younger players under his wing.

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“What’s really cool about it is seeing kind of the dynamic where you’ve got Travis Dye talking to a young freshman, you know what I mean?” Riley said on “Trojans Live” on Monday. “Bringing some of that knowledge of, ‘I’ve been there for a little while and I’ve seen kind of a lot of what you’ve seen,’ and being able to help and kind of guide them and lead the team. That experience has been great.

“That has certainly been one of the kind of silver linings of COVID is the opportunities it’s given some of these guys to get an extra year of college, and we’re fortunate we have several that are taking advantage of it.”

Lincoln Riley opens up on the message that Solomon Byrd’s strong performance sends

As USC dove into the transfer portal to rebuild the roster this past offseason, Solomon Byrd flew under the radar. The former Wyoming defensive lineman played in eight games last season before leaving to join forces with Lincoln Riley and the Trojans.

Byrd had four tackles and a key sack in USC’s 45-17 victory last week. It was quite the breakout performance, and Riley said it’s the type of game that can send a message to other players waiting their turn to get onto the field.

“I think there are so many guys in a college football locker room right now that are in that same position or something like it that he was,” Riley said, in part. “For every guy you see out there making plays, there’s going to be two or three others at every single position that they want to be the ones out there. That’s just the nature of the business. We’re not rolling in with 50 guys to play a game. You have big rosters, you have a lot of people, you have a lot of people that want to play.”