Lincoln Riley has said in recent years that USC football needs to emphasize recruiting more than the transfer portal for roster development and construction. In an ideal world, USC would be recruiting better and retaining good players more consistently. This is not an ideal world.
Quinten Joyner is off to the transfer portal. Bear Alexander is in the portal. Multiple offensive linemen are in the portal. No one is going to miss Mason Murphy, who made lots of crucial mistakes this past season and was plainly not coached well by Josh Henson, but Joyner is a significant loss, given that he was supposed to be RB1 in 2025. Bear Alexander’s presence on the defensive line was sorely missed in the last two months of the 2024 season. Like it or not, these departures will have to be replaced with portal pickups.
Lincoln Riley’s plan to shift toward a recruiting-first roster construction strategy has not panned out.
We now have a situation in which USC has to land big fish in the portal. Oregon grabbed one of the better quarterbacks on the market, Dillon Gabriel, in the 2024 offseason and is now 13-0 and the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff. USC doesn’t need a starting quarterback, but it does need multiple starting offensive linemen and a starting defensive lineman. Is USC’s NIL operation robust enough to get better results? We don’t know if it is, but the Trojans have to make real gains in the transfer portal if the 2025 season is going to be good enough to save Riley’s job and turn the program around.
Like it or not, the transfer portal has become central to USC’s future. It’s not where Lincoln Riley wanted to be, and it’s not where Trojan fans wanted to be … but it’s reality, as harsh as that might seem.