The USC Trojans aren’t doing nearly as well as the Oregon Ducks on the recruiting trail, a clear indicator that the Ducks are crushing the Trojans in the NIL space.
Need facts to prove this? 247Sports unearthed them. 247 compiled the number of blue-chip prospects pulled in by various college football programs for the 2024 cycle. USC has eight thus far. Oregon has 17.
That’s a minus-9 differential for USC and Lincoln Riley.
We can talk about whether this is a Lincoln Riley problem or an NIL problem. Is the staff not recruiting well enough, or is the staff making its best possible effort only for Oregon to throw in a bigger bag at the last minute and pluck a recruit USC thought it had? A lot of people are debating that question, and that’s fine. What’s not fine for USC is the bottom-line result: The Trojans aren’t collecting nearly as much high-end talent as the Ducks. A difference of nine blue-chip prospects is more than a little. If this was a difference of just two or three players, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but with a difference of nine prospects, it’s necessary for people at USC to insist on something better from the NIL operation.
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