Three years ago, USC turned college football on its head when it convinced Lincoln Riley to leave Oklahoma and become the Trojans head coach following the 2021 regular season.
An instant Twitter rivalry was born, as both USC fans and Oklahoma fans hurled incoherent insults back and forth at one another over the internet.
One common theme from the Oklahoma faithful was a warning for USC fans: Lincoln Riley is not what he seems. His record (55-10 at the time) says one thing, but the way he’d run the OU program into the ground before leaving said another.
USC fans, of course, couldn’t be bothered by such a ridiculous claim. They’d just stolen the best young coach in college football from a blue blood program and saw national championships and Heisman trophies in their future.
They said things like “Cope” or “cry more,” and when the 2022 season rolled around and USC had a Heisman trophy-winning quarterback, and Oklahoma had a 6-6 regular season, it appeared the Trojans might’ve been absolutely right about the hire.
Fast forward to December of 2024, and the tone is quite different on social media. The common theme in today’s exchanges between the fan bases: OU fans were right, and Riley effectively destroyed two blueblood football programs.
USC is 14-11 over the last two seasons, and is coming off a 6-6 season in its first year in the Big Ten. To this point, Riley has been able to keep the boo birds at bay thanks to his ability to recruit and retain top-shelf offensive talent.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case for Riley’s program as of late. On Tuesday, USC saw Zachariah and Zion Branch, two of the most highly-rated prospects of Riley’s tenure in LA, enter the transfer portal.
To make matters worse, Raleek Brown — a former five-star offensive prospect that flipped from OU to USC to follow Riley — had this to say about the decision to leave USC.
With the loss of the Branch brothers, Lincoln Riley has an alarming trend that will be very difficult to explain: Nine of his 12 top-100 signees to date have eventually transferred out of his program.
Since landing the job at USC and building out superb transfer/recruiting class in 2022, Riley’s program has seen a steady decline. In fact, over the last two portal cycles, the Trojans have lost 47 players to the transfer portal, and 18 of them have been either former top 150 players or four-star transfer targets.
Take a look at some of the names that have left USC over the last two portal cycle:
2024 Class (No. 20 Overall)
- Jason Zandamela (IOL) | ★★★★☆ | No. 1 WR | No. 46 OVR
2023 Class (No. 7 Overall)
- Zachariah Branch (WR) | ★★★★★ | No. 1 WR | No. 7 OVR
- Malachi Nelson (QB) | ★★★★★ | No. 5 QB | No. 13 OVR
- Duce Robinson (TE) | ★★★★★ | No. 1 TE | No. 19 OVR
- Quinton Joyner (RB) | ★★★★☆ | No. 9 RB | No. 50 OVR
- Tackett Curtis (S) | ★★★★☆ | No. 12 S | No. 146 OVR
2022 Class (No. 6 Overall)
- Domani Jackson (CB) | ★★★★★ | No. 1 CB | No. 15 OVR
- Zion Branch (S) | ★★★★☆ | No. 6 S | No. 58 OVR
- Raleek Brown (RB) | ★★★★☆ | No. 3 RB | No. 69 OVR
Other Four-Star+ Transfers
- Dorian Singer, WR
- Korey Foreman, EDGE
- Mario Williams, WR
- Zion Branch, S
- Raesjon Davis, LB
- DJ Peevy, EDGE
- Mason Murphy, OT
- Bear Alexander, DT
- Miller Moss, QB
USC fans are starting to call for Riley’s job, and while there might be cause for it, there’s likely not an end to Riley’s tenure in sight, thanks to a buyout pushing nine figures.
That’s one of the downsides of signing a head coach to a 10-year mega-contract.
