Once crown jewels, many of USC’s best recruits are being mined by the transfer portal

LOS ANGELES — The future of USC’s football program – and plenty of others – sat miles away from the crew that had amassed on Howard Jones Field on Monday afternoon, miles away from the debuts of new assistant coaches and a spiraling portal sucking in more names by the minute.

No, the future of the Trojans’ program, really, sat under fluorescent lights in a tiny hearing room in West Los Angeles on Monday, a small group of lawyers meeting for the first time in a proceeding against USC that could change everything. The National Labor Relations Board-backed push to label collegiate student-athletes as employees has been a long time in the making; USC was the guinea pig, a private university oozing with athletics-generated revenue.

If the NLRB’s opening statements on USC players – “they are subject to respondents’ control in performance of their services” – are upheld, it will open doors to widespread stability amid the “craziness” that Coach Lincoln Riley described after practice Monday. No more NIL secrecy. No more transfer-portal ambiguity. Players, as employees, could collectively bargain for rights that would pave the way to a salary cap and a simple free-agency period.

For now, though, Riley is still attempting to navigate his way through the confusing landscape of modern-day college football to rebuild USC. And as the Trojans toss a 7-5 season and attempt to move seamlessly into the Big Ten in 2024, coaching changes have prompted the portal to give – importing Oregon State transfer brothers Easton Macarenas-Arnold and Akili Arnold.

But it’s taken, too. And taken plenty.

On Sunday night, a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed that former crown jewel quarterback Malachi Nelson was set to hit the portal. Multiple reports came Monday that cornerback Domani Jackson, once a home-run commit out of Mater Dei, would follow. And later Monday, a different source with knowledge of the situation told the Southern California News Group that freshman linebacker Tackett Curtis was set to transfer, a Louisiana product who had won the hearts of most everyone around USC in the fall.

Across the last two recruiting classes, USC drew in 17 prospects rated four stars or better by 247 Sports. Six of the 17 have now transferred as of Monday – including four of five in the Trojans’ 2022 class.

“My energy goes into the people that are here,” Riley said Monday. “No bad blood, no ill will to anybody that’s not, but we’re going to move on with those that are dying to be USC Trojans.”

Each departure makes sense, in its own way, and follows clear winds of change across USC’s program. Jackson never quite bloomed across two years as a Trojan; the coach who recruited him, Donte Williams, is gone, replaced by Doug Belk. Curtis is in a similar situation, as another source with knowledge of the situation told SCNG that inside linebackers coach Brian Odom will be out after the season ends. Nelson, too, is leaving a couple of weeks after Riley made it clear USC would search the portal for quarterbacks.

But all were bedrock in the very foundation of the wobbling Jenga tower Riley has assembled through recruiting at USC. Riley was high, in particular, on Curtis, and a source told SCNG that the staff had several meetings with Curtis to try to push to keep him.

Nelson, too, was supposed to take the crown from Caleb Williams, USC’s path forward at the quarterback position set in gold through his tenure and beyond to 2026 commit Julian Lewis. But Nelson’s freshman year as a Trojan was marred by injury, and the Los Alamitos High product seemed to fade into the background rather than garnering buzz as USC’s future savior.

On Monday, Riley was asked about how his approach to the portal has evolved.

“To your question earlier about the quarterbacks,” he said, acknowledging one reporter, “you want to have guys who are hungry to get on the field right away, but also guys that have a mind to be developed and have a good sense of reality.”

“And I think that’s kind of the niche that we’re looking for because it always felt like development is one of the hallmarks of our program, one of the strengths that we have,” Riley continued, “but the other half of that – you have to do your job, the other half of it is you have to have people who are willing to hang in there and go through what it really takes to develop and become a really good player at this level.”

Not hard to read between the lines. It largely summarized Riley’s comments, shrouded in code, on outgoing transfers Monday: We want the guys who want to be here. 

And it appears, too, that will parlay into recruiting in the future – searching for prospects committed to developing at USC. In the beginning of USC’s rebuild, Riley said Monday, they felt like they wanted to be competitive immediately, buoying a portal-heavy approach.

“Now, it’s starting to shift to really how we want to build it and the best way, which is a little bit more into the high school, the developmental, stacking great classes on top of each other and then using the portal here and there as we need it,” Riley continued.

And for all the transfer portal mess, USC has had a number of recruiting wins in recent weeks, particularly with the Monday commitment of Texas defensive lineman Carlon Jones.

But USC has had plenty of recruiting wins already in Riley’s tenure. And plenty of those wins are now developing elsewhere.