Welcome to the solid verbal ill that for me.
I'm a man, I'm for I've heard so many players say, well, I want to be happy, you want to be happy for Dake Ado State?
Is that?
Whoo whoo? And no, Dan and Tye. Hey everybody, and welcome to a brand new only Homer's a Loud episode. Today we are discussing USC. It's just me, I am discussing USC with Ryan Abraham of USC football dot Com, part of the twenty four to seven Sports Network. We go way back with him, long long friend of the show, and it's quite simple. Obviously, this is a bonus show. We've already done one of these with Oregon, we did one with Notre Dame and LSU. Tie also has one
this week with Larry Williams discussing Clemson. But we don't really have time to deep dive teams during the season because we spend a good chunk, if not all, of our time previewing or recapping games, so it's hard to take a step back and look at sort of a state of the program, state of the team situation. So I've found these to be quite helpful, interesting and hopefully you do too, whether or not you're a fan of the specific team we're talking about, or just a fan
of knowing more about teams in general. We are going to do more of these throughout the season, throughout the off season, because why not. We like learning and really going deeper inside of teams than we have been able to during the season. So there's that. And we call it only Homer's allowed because of this clip. Would Homer Clublet.
Look, it has no Homers, we're allowed to have one.
I felt so left out, and I think that's a good thing.
I like that.
It's a nice reference. It goes way back to when I actually watched The Simpsons, and you probably did too, So I'm not gonna waste any more of your time, but I'm recording this after the fact. Ryan was sensational, not a surprise at all, usc and a complicated situation with the disappointed season, but still being a program with the capability of having a higher ceiling than just about any program in the country. So really cool talk with Ryan,
and hope you enjoy it. Now, All right? With that, I and I guess the proverbial We are now joined by Ryan Abraham, old old, dear, dear friend of the solid verbal. We go way way back with Ryan. He started his podcast, the Parastyle Podcast in two thousand and eight, I believe when we started hours. He is the editor in chief Commando High Ranking Titan of USC football dot Com, which is part of twenty four to seven Sports And is it CBS now Yes?
Yeah, okay, yes.
Yes, okay. How's life? How are you?
I'm doing all right? You know, Southern California.
It's a rivalry weeks, I guess for USC coming up. Been excited to talk to you guys again. It's been fun to watch you guys grow, like as the podcast industry grows, and you know how much work it to put in there. So it's been cool to kind of see you guys grow along with you know, all the other college football podcast out there. But you guys were you know, you guys are the original.
I appreciate it and same just because even pre dating the solid verbal this, I mean, we've spoken about this before. You were on my pre SI video shoot that I eventually sold to SI as a series, and I think I interviewed you on camera in two thousand and six at a tailgate of yours.
Yeah, we used to host big tailgates. It became harder, Like the more I got involved on the media side of it really was tough to do that, but yeah, we would.
It was great.
We get like two hundred people to come out to like our RV and had We had a lot of fun with it, but it was it was a lot of work. People ask me all the time, do you miss that. I'm like, not really, but now you got to be in the press box like three hour early.
I couldn't do anything like that anymore.
This is true, and I should mention and just in terms of like I don't need to blow up your bona fides anymore. But I did an interview with I was just gonna be like anonymous and try to play it cool. That was like a big broadcaster.
But no.
I did an interview with Chris Fowler and we were talking about podcasts, and he had been on our show before and he had listened to our show, hopefully not taking it too seriously ahead of big games he had to call. But he was asking about podcasting in general, and he mentioned that he listened to the Peristyle podcast ahead of any USC game he was calling. So if you want to know what kind of dumb dums are
influencing major major broadcasts ahead of them. You are listening to two of them right now.
I've heard of Chris Fauler's yeah that he would do that absolutely.
So here's so we're obviously here talking USC. If you're listening to the show, there's a good chance you either already listened to Ryan's show, maybe listen to our show. You're probably from southern California or went to us by the way. If that's the case, I hope you and your loved ones survived the fires and everything is that like that is healthy and h and safe in your life. My parents barely barely escaped, which I'm very very grateful.
I mean, they were fine, but their house barely barely escaped. So always a scary moment to hope everybody's all right. Here is on a much less serious note, USC football, Colin, what happened?
Yeah, I mean that's a great uh, it's a great question. And there's it's funny you do. I'll do different radio shows, and it depends who you're talking to. Some people are like, oh, yeah, they're gonna get rid of Clay Helton, right, this isn't the right direction. And other people are like whow he went to the he won the Rose Bowl, they won the Packed Bull Championship last year. You got to give him some time. It's still pretty mixed. I think in the media as far as the USC fan base goes, Dan,
it's not mixed at all. I've when you get a consensus, like on our message boards, that never happens.
There's always fighting. There's always right now.
The only fighting is I knew before you did that Clay Hilton was not going to be a good coach. So it's when it's a consensus on the fans side,
it's probably not a good sign. And you know, to be fair, I think the when you talk to people inside the program, you get that, you get the hey man, he won the Rose Bowl, and they you know, they did great things last year, winning the Pac twelve for the first time in ten years, and you know they're gonna have You're at a freshman quarterback, you're gonna get
all that kind of stuff. But I think if you just you consume a lot of college football, Dan, people that watch, the fans that die hard watch, they see the important games and how USC looks in them, and it's and there's a lot of advantages to being USC on the West coast, you get tons of five star recruits.
You just just.
By being just Clay Hilton being like a decent coach, You're gonna get some good things. And you can start off one in three and win the Rose Bowl.
I don't think you.
Can do that a lot of places, but you can at USC. You get the right quarterback Sam Darnold, and you make a run and you can do those kind of things. So but the fans see what's going going on, and you know, scoring three points on the road against Stanford and having fourteen to three leads against Texas and giving up thirty four unanswered, and you know this past weekend against Cal you haven't lost to them since two thousand and three.
They're not passing the Eyeball test.
So I do feel like, you know, Cloud is one of the nicest men that you ever want to meet. But I think there's a lot of shortcomings as far as the coaching staff goes. Some people argue with me, oh, they don't have great players. We do like a composite index on twenty four to seven sports where you look at the current roster and where they were ranked come out of high school. I know it's not exact science, but you look at the top four programs, USC is
number four on that index. The three teams above them are Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State. Those teams are all really good. The outlier is USC that isn't really good. So yeah, you can say recruiting rankings don't mean everything, but it's a pretty good indicationion of the top three teams in the country.
And why is USC not.
They're not like number ten or fifteen, They're like nowhere near that. So to me, yeah, and that's sorry for the long.
Time year this is this this show for it.
It's really for me.
It's more about the coaching side, I think, the development side than the talent that they have on the team right now.
So what is when you look at this season specifically, which obviously the conversation about USC is a bigger picture than just any one season. But when you look at this season, what is plain old dumb unluckiness and what where is their legitimate concern that was avoidable concern unforced errors?
If you will, Oh, that's a good one for unluckiness. I feel like, I mean a lot of the unluckiness though I think you bring on yourself. Like you could say it was unlucky against Cal that USC had a snap go over JT. Daniel's head when they're up fourteen to nothing and they were driving, you know, to start the third quarter, and that set Cal on a like an eight minute run where they scored fifteen points and that was enough to win the game.
I'd say a batsnap is an unforced era.
Though, yeah it's but that's also for a bats snap from a center who's been committing bad snaps all year, and the coaching staff refuses to bench the seniors captain. So I think there's been some unlucky things, but a lot of them, Dan, I think you bring on yourself by dudes. I feel like there was coaching changes that needed to be made, like the the Neil Callaway yeah being fired after you know, after week nine, I believe it was.
Yeah, the offensive line coach, yeah.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
The offensive line coach that was he probably shouldn't have been around after last year.
You know.
I think Clay Hilton kind of waited too long to do some of these things. And you know, we've seen him make, you know, some in retrospect poor decisions, but a lot of them. I think that the Sam Donald Max Brown people get upset for him, but I understood that in the beginning, you know.
Maybe after a while.
No, But but a lot of the other ones have been like very apparent, you know, and they have, you know, half of their staff are kind of like part time recruiters. Dan, they don't even get involved in that. If you remember the Pete Carroll years, like everyone and had to be a relentless recruiter. I think in college football, if you have a staff and not everyone just you might have one guy that's not a relentless recruiter, but if you have more than that, it's really a problem for the program.
And USC has a lot of that. So I feel like.
There's been some kind of you know, weird luck stuff in both directions. I mean, I think they're fairly lucky to get a win against Washington State, the best looking team in the Pac twelve right now. But a lot of it, to me, Dan was kind of self inflicted wounds.
Things that you made a decision maybe you know, six months ago, eight months ago, and it's you know, it's coming to roost now you're seeing the results of it now, So it's hard to call that bad luck when you could have prevented that by making a change earlier.
So I thought in watching and I just actually rewatched the second half and it was painful to watch of the usc COL game because I felt like in a lot of ways that was like a super microcosm of the season, and playing a pretty solid first half, and the defense really came to play, and really a defense you could argue came to playing that entire game. They
just were not helped out by the offense. Then completely shut out in the second half, and mistake after mistake and drive stall after drives, all unnecessarily in some cases. So when just focusing on this offense, it was hard to have a real good concept of what JT. Daniels
would look like as a true freshman coming in. I think everybody would agree on that, But just in terms of what this offense, you know, what everybody envisioned this offense to be moving forward after a pretty successful year last year, and what it sort of looks like now
with certainly a couple of huge playmakers not there. And everybody knows Sam Darnold, but I think the Ronald Jones thing is pretty huge, and what he was able to do when he was healthy for USC, just in terms of moving that offense in a pretty big direction forward. What happened to get from optimism and talent to almost flatlining with or without Tim Martin calling the plays.
Yeah, I think the play calling thing doesn't matter all that much to me. It's more about the offensive design. It seems like when this coaching staff gets a quarterback that they just trust, like Sam Darnold, it was more about a one read and then go let him do you know, off script, do your own thing, be creative. And I feel like they're doing that with j T. Daniels as well, because if you saw games where his backups were in where Matt Fink or Jack Sears who played in different games when JT.
Daniel was hurt, the.
Offense looked like it would actually flowing, like they looked like there was some sort of cohesion, like there was a plan in place.
It seemed like with JT.
Daniels it's more of, hey, go find one of your five star wide receivers deep and huck it down to him and he'll probably go make a big play. It just doesn't seem like they're helping him out quite as much as they were some of the other guys, but they do have playmakers. I mean, I love, you know, Tyler Vonn's one of my favorite guys to cover. He's amazing players, just so smooth out there. And Michael Pittman's
come on really well on the outside. I'm on Ross Saint Brown's a true freshman, makes a lot of plays. He was better earlier in this and that he is now they're they're kind of bracketing them a little bit more and trying to take them away. And you know, they got a good stable of running backs aka Cedric Ware was basically in Ronald Jones's shadow. Another Texas kid came in the same year and he's had a huge,
you know, true senior season after Ronald Jones left. He's on his way to, you know, potentially get one hundred thousand yard season. So I think they're fine at the playmaker spot. The biggest issue to me, dan Is is the offensive line, because they had a lot of guys coming back, like full four, full time regular starters, a bunch of other guys that have starting experience. I think they were fifteen deep and all of them or four and five star guys, so and they've had the same
system for about a six year stretch. Dan, They've had a different offensive line coach every year. They've had the same guy for the last three years.
Now he's let go. But they should have been a lot better than what they were.
I mean to have minus five yards rushing against Texas, the forty one yards rushing in the second, forty one yards total in the second half against Calk.
Stuff like that shouldn't be happening.
And you're seeing complete bus where you know, I think a Stanford game back when you know they almost scored three points against Stafford losing seventeen to three. There were so many instances where four rushers were trying to get to JT. Daniels or stop the run with six or seven guys blocking, and one or two of those rushers would come unblocked. It's amazing, Like the numbers just didn't work out. You could almost double team every guy and they still weren't.
Able to block.
So there's been a lot of bus you know, mental rep you know, mental bus, physical beats, things like that. But to me, I think it's the offensive line that's been the biggest issue. But that's coupled with overall just the offense when you're running with JT. Daniels just doesn't seem like it's it's something that's well thought out. Like you watch Mike Leach's offense, it's like you might not agree the way he does it or whatever, but it's
well thought out. And if you look at USC, it's not well thought out.
They are there playing to a system. You can tell that the players know why they're doing everything when everything is going to happen. And when Washington State is beat like they did lose to USC, it's because they were outplayed. It's because you know, people, Washington State fans I think have some some room to stand on some some calls
in that game. Probably both teams do. But with USC, so, I guess my question with you know you're pointing to the offensive line is the big group that has disappointed.
Is that a recruiting evaluation thing like four and five stars are really sort of Mountain West type talents or do you see it as a development thing where guys look great for two game stretches, three game, four game stretches and then for whatever reason, disappear and it's just sort of a development and you know, coaching them up kind of thing.
Yeah, I would lean more towards the development side because they are definitely players that were recruited by you know, Alabama or some other big programs, So there weren't like they weren't four star guys that they were four stars just because USC game.
And offer like that.
That can happen, you know, you can get, yeah, some inflation in the ratings and stuff like that, but for the most part it's been that way.
Now there's been some missus.
Stanford's done a really good job of recruiting five star offensive linemen on the West Coast and you know and around the country.
So they'll get some of those guys.
But you know, for me, I think they've developed some like a Chris Brown is probably their best offensive lineman. He's playing guard for them right now, and I think he's graded out the highest on Pro Football Focus and to've seen some instances of that. But there's other guys like Austin Jackson, who's playing left tackle right now, hasn't seemed to develop as much.
I mean, he's a really athletic kid.
You watch him like, yeah, I could see that guy being in the NFL, but we haven't seen him really take the next steps, and I think, you know, to me, it's coming down to coaching. It just seems like, you know, Neil Calloway was an older you know, he's an older coach. He's you know, really nice guy, wasn't really fun. He didn't really talk to the media very much. You just kind of kept to himself. But that you know, it
just didn't seem to like resonate. He didn't seem to connect with these younger players, where Tim Drevno that have now seems like there's at least a connection there that players will talk about, Hey, we're doing more technique stuff. He's fixing things when we do something wrong. So I mean, I don't think you can change a whole lot. And I'm not saying Tim Drevis was the greatest offensive line coach in the world. It's hard to it's really hard
to evaluate that. But when you could watch like the five guys play as a unit and just not pick up where you know, someone just runs a stunt or a delayed blitz or something and they have no idea what's going on? To me that that usually points to coaching.
Yeah, yeah, preparedness and coaching. So you are I mean, you're at practice covering the team. You obviously go to games you're on the road, but you're also there summer workouts, fall camp, like you are around this team, you and around you know the past, however many teams. You really have a good concept of what these teams look like, sort of soup to nuts before this season started, and you're watching workouts here in fall camp. How did this?
I guess we can still focus on offense in your minds. Should the offense be far, far beyond what it appears to be?
Are you?
Are you actually surprised that they've struggled like they have.
I kind of am.
You know, we knew that the offensive line would be really the lynch pit. I mean, you needed the offensive line to play well, and it just seemed like, okay, all these guys back, they got to be better this year. And you know, to come out of the gate in the second game of the season and score three points against you know, a six wins stamp for team.
We know now that's that's not a good look.
And I get that there's a freshman quarterback, but he's he's been really I mean, he's been good in spots, he's not been great.
A lot of the USC fans are on him.
I don't think he's you know, best suited for the kind of offense they want to run, because when you when you have a quarterback that's not really a threat to take it and run himself when you're doing all those fakes and stuff with the zone reads, it just doesn't seem to work that well. But the guys behind him, like Jack Sears and Matt Fink, they're more runners. They can do that a little bit better. So if you want to run this offense, you're probably better off using
one of the other guys. But I don't put a lot of the blame on the you know, the true freshman quarterback and all that kind of stuff.
But really it is that.
And I was kind of surprised because when you see seven on sevens, when you see the the offseason workouts, you see all the athletes out there, and I'll talk to coaches that you know from other Pac twelve programs and ask them like, hey, you know, what do you think of USC's talent level, And none of them have said, oh, they're overrated. They all said, yeah, that's a really talented team. They're just not that disciplined or not that well, coach,
and it's it's kind of bad. So I would I thought they would be a little bit better this year on offense, at least, I mean a lot better than what they've looked like.
And they'll they'll have like a great quarter, you.
Know, where they score a bunch of points and then they'll like shut down for the rest of the game.
And it just that to me, it has a little bit surprising.
One of the interesting things to me about this USC team is given the offensive struggles, and that really does put a pretty big weight on the defense just because you are, you know, the offense stalls really quickly the defense is back out on the field, the defense can get tired. That's when we see injuries happen. And USC has had you know, the Ben Snake bitten in the secondary for a chunk of this season. Obviously, Porter Gustin
is out for the year. Cam Smith, I believe, has missed time this year, and there was a lot of turnover up front just because of graduation and NFL stuff. But the defense largely has you know, kept it together. They've they've performed, you know, probably they've overachieved at times given what they've had to deal with. With their own offense. Has that surprised you that the defense, even with things stacked against them to whatever, to whatever extent, has accomplished impressive results.
Yeah, you know, I think it's it's kind of a mixed bag. I've seen them put in sudden changed situations quite a bit and respond well in games, you know, other games not as much. And some of it we've seen some frustration Isaiah Langley that the corner went over and kind of bumped JT. Daniels, but it seemed like maybe it was more mad at the offensive line or whatever.
When you know, basically the USC was pitching a shutout against Cal and then they give up a safety, so it's like and but you know they two short fields and Cow scores two quick touchdowns and it's over. So that's a situation where we've seen other times during the season they would bounce back and get a stop, and that they didn't, and you know, you get it, like if the offense is just going to go not scoring for you know, twenty minutes, thirty minutes at a time,
it's a lot to ask, uh for this defense. And I think they've had some some guys play well, like Emon Marshall had a horrible penalty at the end of the cow game, but his numbers are really good as far as like they're just not completing a lot of passes to his side of the field.
I think he helped himself.
He's a former five star kid who was going to he wanted to be, you know, leave as a junior, but came back and he's played a lot better this year than he has in years past, So I think
that's helped. But as a secondary, uh, what's your what's your the line in the celibra, Like, what's your favorite interception from USC this year, they've had two, like the last in the country in interceptions, but they're they're I think they're second in the country, and like passes defended, but a lot of that's up at the line of scrimmage with defensive linemen and linebackers, so you gotta I think you've got to create.
A few more opportunities. But it's hard.
I think when one side of the ball is very hit or missed and there'll be some big plays and then just the lulls of nothing, it's hard for the defense to kind of keep in mind. So I might be a little bit more of a defensive apologist or whatever. When you know, people tell there's a lot of USC fans that are upset with the defense, but I give them more of a pass just.
Because what they've had to do. So I agree with you more so.
When you look at and you mentioned, you know, Clay Helton. Everybody loves him as a human and there are some things that you know, certain people are I think a lot of USC fans look at as shortcomings with him as running a big program. Where is he best as a coach?
What?
What is sort of unassailable that he has done well?
Yeah, I think he gets the team together and and he's they need they there's things that they needed that Clay Hilton brings to the table. So you could, you know, I don't agree with the higher I don't think his resume was anywhere near what you would want for someone.
To coach USC.
But they did need an adult in the room and Clay Hilton has certainly brought that to the table. He's brought some stability and I think the players you know, rallied around them.
They like him.
They feel like he's a father figure to them, and I think he's been honest with them.
And I think he's been.
Very steady and just a force that they needed someone that wasn't going to be a rollercoaster, and he's definitely not been that. And you know, he's bringing a routine to this team, but sometimes you could say it's a routine to a fault, like they don't change a lot.
Every week is.
Like the same thing, doing the same thing, and I feel like maybe after a while, by week ten, you're like, hey, let's mix it up a little bit, let's change practice days around or something like that. But I think the biggest thing he's brought some stability there because you had the Lane Kiffin and the Steve Sarkisian stuff. I mean, stark lasted I think it was fifteen or sixteen games,
like that's all he coached at USC. It's crazy to hire a head coach and he doesn't last, you know, a year and a half.
So I think they needed that stability. And if you were going to say.
If Clayout only lasts for three years as a permanent head coach, I still think it was a positive thing overall for USA. I know there's a lot of fans that are upset, but he brought some really nice results in those first two years above what you would expect from someone Clay Helton, and they did bring some stability
to the program. It just if you're looking at it and saying, hey, you want to be in the playoff picture, you want to be in the national conversation, it doesn't look like that's going to be a regular thing outside of you know, getting a Sam Darnold in the program and he can do some amazing things. It just doesn't seem like the staff and he has put together is the on the road to bring you there?
Is it?
Do you think it's a staff thing? Do you think it's a culture thing? Where he is you know, he has raised the floor of that that personal you know, he's drama free. You know, Sark and lang Kiffin, we're very much not where he's raised the floor of Okay, we are not going to be an embarrassment, you know, doing things around the program. But at the same time, he doesn't have that staff of killers, he doesn't have
that culture necessarily. Will you see other schools that have succeeded and you know, you go behind the scenes of Michigan or Clemson or Alabama or Georgia where there is that that cohesive element where everybody is bought in every day, every hour, every minute. And maybe that's not necessarily the case with USC. Is that the big thing that's lacking culture and that that sort of staff of killers.
Yeah, I agree with you one hundred percent.
There they've you know, he took a different route if you look at what Justin Wilcox did. Who's you know, the new head coach at Calvin their couple of years. He brought in Bill Baldwin, you know, a head coach to be his offensive coordinator. He brought in Tim de Ruder, who was a head coach at Fresno State, you know, got ten win seasons and stuff, to be his defensive coordinator. He brought in people that would be threatening to take his job if he doesn't do well.
And I feel like Clay Helton went the other way.
He brought in familiar people that no one was really threatening to take his job, like there wasn't there's not really a head coach on the staff outside of, you know, of Clay Helton, so they don't have that those kind of generals that you would want to go to war with. They're all kind of lower level guys and you're you know, a lot of guys are doing jobs for the very first time. If you're a first time head coach, you don't want to hire a first time offensive coordinator. And
that's what Ryleton with tem Martin, he brought in. He promoted, you know, from the support staff, Brian Ellis, who's the now the quarterback coach, knowing that he has no quarterback, he's not never been a permanent quarterback coach for a college program, and you knew you were going to have a you know whoever, your quarterback isn't going to start for the very first time, so all of that stuff is like you're wondering why, Like, yeah, you're familiar with
these people, but they haven't done the job before. And I think if you're a young head coach who hasn't been around the block a lot, you'd want to bring in more experienced people. And the one hire he made that I liked was Delan McCollough, the running back coach last year, and he helped Ronald Jones have a fifteen hundred yard season he was at Indiana, And you look at that and a lot of people ask like, well, the coaches really even want to come to USC. Well,
I talked to Delan McCullough quite a bit. He developed running backs from Indiana, put him in the NFL. He recruited in SEC country, trying to convince guys to not go to LSU or not go to Auburn, and he got somebody, didn't get other ones. And he would tell me, like after their careers, they would come to me and say, you know, I wish I would have came to see you. It's hard to get guys to go to Indiana, he said. Once he came to USC. It's more about picking which
one you want. Then, Oh, I got to convince some guy to come to USC. They want to do that. So he saw the advantages that you have of just being at a USC and.
He came in and did a lot of great things. He changed a lot.
Now he ended up leaving and going to the Kansas City Chiefs after a year. And we didn't see that sort of hired. You know, that was a very successful hire, even only stayed for a year. I didn't see Clay Outon kind of do that again. It was more a one off thing. So for me, it's about getting out of your comfort zone when you're hiring people. Get the people that have done the job before somewhere else. They don't know the fights on, they don't know anything, but no know anything about USC.
They've heard of it. That's it, and bring him in to do their job.
And I think if Clayilt gets another chance and he can go out and redo the staff that way, I think he can be successful.
But the way he's hired the.
Staff that I just don't think it was really set.
Up for success.
So this is going to sound crazy, and most of my theories about USC generally are, but I think there is there's a little bit of meat on this bone. So the conventional wisdom with USC is the premiere program in the PAC twelve. I think that's correct. I think that's you know, I think that's irrefutable at this point, just because the PAC twelve sort of goes as USC
goes at sometimes Oregon. When you have that flash, you know, when you had Pete Carroll, you had flash, when you had Chip Kel you had flash at the top of the conference, it made a difference. But the conventional wisdom with USC is you're in LA you can just walk out your door and choose, you know, whatever five star,
whatever four star you want. And I don't think that's not true, but I think there is something misleading about or I don't know if it's misleading, but like we look at the stories about Larry Kocher at Miami where he just you could walk out the door in Miami and he sort of starchased. He went on like rivals dot Com and he just put together these amazing classes.
But when you actually look at the physical makeup of these classes, it didn't makes sense in a lot of cases, and the evaluation wasn't There is there an element of USC recruiting actually being difficult because there are challenges with
I mean USC, and this is along with Miami. You look at those top programs that you mentioned, whether it's Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, how many of those programs have a pretty big, healthy chunk of their recruiting classes come to them within a half hour, you know, forty five minutes an hour. And is that necessarily a bad thing that players aren't from that exact city.
No, I think it's a great point.
I think when you talk about recruiting, it's kind of like you're building a wall and you need brick and you need mortar.
You don't need everyone to.
Be a five star guy, you need some of those guys that gel and if there's some kid who's a three star that grew up I mean maybe you grew up close by, maybe it's a little further away dreaming about going to USC and you don't and there's a reason to take and like, hey, yeah, maybe there's a guy we have a little bit ranked higher on our board, but this is a good guy to bring into the program, right. I think Thomas Graham was a guy like that who's
you know, you're familiar with up at Oregon. His sister I think was going to USC, like he wanted to go to USC forever, was committed. They didn't really recruit him all that hard, and it's like that's a kid that and he's actually good, you know, he's he's started.
I think he started, Yeah, he started Ashman. Yeah.
Yeah.
So someone like that, like USC would like kind of pass on because there was someone else with more stars or something that they were looking at.
And ever, what you just needed to take guys like that.
You need to fill in your class with other people that you just feel comfortable with that you know, that's what they grew up wanting to do. You know they're going to help the program, So I think you can kind of get star chasing. But I think Pete Carroll had it best where it's more about evaluation than recruiting.
That there are those stars out there everyone you know, but if you don't like a four or five star guy, don't recruit them, you know, And I think sometimes you can chase those stars a lot and you get the average star rating to be really hot. USC's is always like you know, one or two in the country as far as like the average star guy coming in. But it's to me, it's more about the evaluation process because there's going to be some guys that are overrated, and
you know, you can't avoid getting them all. I mean, you're going to get at some of them every once in a while, but if you get too many of them, and I think that really hurts your recruiting class. So I think you're right. Evaluation to me is the hardest part. Because you have so many talented players in Southern California
you can choose from. You got to make sure you choose the right ones because then you let a Thomas Graham go because you went over him and he's starting at one of your rivals, and obviously when he comes back to play USC, he wants to beat him pretty bad.
I also think there is something where you didn't grow up in southern California, or did.
You No, I'm a Yankee Pennsylvania and then in Massachusetts is where I went to high school.
Right, But then you went to USC, right?
Yeah? I did, Yes, I moved out yeah.
And now it's like you live in you live in the South Bay. You are a Southern California person through and through, which I think is important. I think there is something about college where you challenge yourself. You challenge yourself, you push yourself. There's something about inserting yourself into a new culture that helps to grow you. And I don't
think that's all that different with college football. And that's why I mentioned, like, you know, Clemson has a bunch of Georgia kids, and Alabama has kids from Texas and Maryland and Indiana and California whatever that. I think there's something about people coming from different backgrounds and when USC and USC has had a ton of success stories with high school kids from LA you know, whether it's the Sarah kids, with Robert Woods and Marquis Lee. I think
Juju went to Long Beach, Paully. I want to say, but you look at the Bedrocks at different position groups for USC over the years, whether it's Pete, Carol Linkiff and Sark whoever, and there are a ton of kids that it doesn't seem like that's still happening from out thousand miles two thousand miles away, whether it's you know, Dwayne Jared or Ray mal Luga or Jeff Buyers from Colorado, Lindell White from Colorado, Leonard Williams maybe the best defensive
linean USC has ever had from about as far away as possible. And the more I see that USC has twenty of their twenty five kids from southern California, the more I wonder, Yes, they are more talented than everybody else in the Pac twelve. But does this sort of extension of high school make for a top five, ten, fifteen culture? Is there any truth to that in your mind?
No? I think that's a great point.
I think when you recruit nationally, you have to be relevant nationally. So it's harder for like five and five USC team to do that. But they got some guys that were on you know, achacentric ware. I think has been a pretty good leader coming out of Texas. So they have some guys. But when we've seen what we've seen from this staff, Dan is a good closing staff.
But because you have like half of the staff being part time recruiters, that makes it harder to get more of the national guys, more from other states, because they've really closed on guys locally. Like they didn't have a safety class a couple of years ago and they got a kid from Arizona and a kid from Vegas, which is you know, it's pretty local to check out for it.
Yeah, but those were guys that were, you.
Know, in the Pactuel footprint and you can get them pretty easy. But they've they've done a lot of it, sort of like cramming for a test at the end where they're they're really they're procrastinating, and then they recruit at the end and they still get some of these guys. But I think the problem is going to be, well, yeah, they had the Rose Bowl, they had the pact World Championship, and that helps you get those guys at the end. This year you're five and five fighting to be bull eligible.
I think it's going to be a lot harder and the way we have it within the early signing period. Most people are signing in the early signing period. Now we thought it would be like a split thing. No, it's like pretty much you signed there and then signing Day in February is just not as big of a deal anymore. So it's it's changed. And this year, I think specifically Dan, because of the problems on the field, they're not going to be able to do the same
thing they done the last couple of years. But I think you're right, they've done that the last couple of years. But a lot of it is getting Southern California guys at the last minute. It's gonna be harder to do that. You're gonna be a lot more planed B and maybe plan C guys for this recruiting class because the team has struggled so much. And then you look at the overall makeup of the roster. Yeah, it's like a bunch of Southern California kids, which are really talented, but you
do need some of that now. It takes a maintenance sometimes if you get a player from out of state, especially as far away as Florida or something like that, guys get homesick, and.
Things like that.
But that's that's something you have to nurture and but you can make it a great part of your culture if you can work those guys in there. And I think it helps the overall team chemistry when you do.
Yeah, and it's you know, you look around the Pac twelve and the teams that are succeeding are not doing it with local talents. This is you know, Washington State is all over the west coast, and Oregon's all over the country. Stanford is all over the country. And I think there's there's probably something to that. You probably would have had a very different experience at USC if you know,
you were surrounded by high school friends. Yeah, it was, it's probably it's probably not a huge deal, but I think it's it's sort of an underrated element of all of this. Do you think at this point that Clay Helton is fighting for his job?
I do.
It's interesting. I think the last two games do mean a lot. It means when you're talking to the fan base and you talk to boosters, Uh, they care that you got blown out last year by Notre Dame in Ohio State, Like those are two of the games that they really care about.
Like they cared about Texas too, but.
This year, you know, they don't want to see you not scoring agains Stafford. They don't want to see you on the road. I mean, you got to be competitive. Yeah, And that the Texas game, so many USC fans went out to that. Austin's a great it was a great weekend. And those are the kind of games the fans love to go see. But you don't get blown out. But
you know, it's a decent Texas team. But it's not like it wasn't like you got blown up by Alabama, right right, you know, So those are the kind of things that really, you know, kind of upset the fan. So I think for Clay Hilton, everything we've heard from inside the program, most of the stuff we've heard, you're hearing all kinds of stuff. USC is in a weird spot right now because they got all these other problems
that the Board of Trustees is dealing with. They don't have you know, Max Nikias is no longer there the president of university. They have an interim president right now, and you have Lyn Swan who's the third athletic director in a row, which just happens to be a former football player at usc SO, no athletic director experience, no hiring firing experience, nothing that would really prepare you for something like this.
So for what we've heard dan the administration.
That what's left or whatever's put together there would rather not make some sort of move. So if somehow he can beat UCLA in Notre Dame, I don't think he's going anywhere. I think that, you know, as much as the fans want I'm gone, I feel like he's going to stay. I don't know if he like loses the Notre Dame but beats UCLA and they're six and six in ball eligible, I'm not sure what's going to happen there.
But my feeling is, and from the people I talk to you, they rather wouldn't make some sort of change. But if you talk to a lot of the fans and a lot of the boosters, it's completely a different story. And they're they're renovating the Colisseum right now, and the problem with it. They raised all the money themselves, but it's all through like a handful of a couple dozen boosters who bought ten twenty million dollars suites. Well, a lot of those people are not going to be very happy,
especially if they lose the UCLA. If they start saying, you know what, I'm out, I don't want these suites. I think that sort of forces the administration's hand. So my gut is dan the administration would rather not do anything. They'd rather say, Hey, he won the Rose Bowl, he won the Packed Goff Championship.
This is a blip on the radar.
But I think that the boosters, especially after the Cow loss, are really really upset with what's going on, and depending on what happens these next two weeks, maybe push them over the edge and you might see a lot of pressure from I don't think pressure from their average fan is going to matter, but if it's pressure from those people that are flipping the bill for the Colisseum renovation, then I think, you know, that might be forcing them to make a change at a time that it wouldn't want to.
So if USC does not look competitive against UCLA, which I don't think will be the case, but if they lose this game by whatever score, they just don't look competitive. They you know, twenty to seventeen, twenty four to seventeen, where they just they lose to a team that is not as talented that is not his experienced to a brand new coaching staff, certainly ucla team that has improved.
We get into weird territory. And I think it was maybe not dissimilar to what happened with Mark Helfrich at Oregon and that very likable dude just don't lose to Oregon State. He lost to Oregon State, and it almost forced people's hands that they felt that they were going to be falling behind by keeping Mark Helfrich. If USC does make a move, if those boosters are infuriated, the important boosters are infuriated, and USC does make a move, and they say, thanks for your service, but we are
going to move in a new direction. Where is your confidence that Lynn Swann, relatively new ad at USSE with obvious long USC ties. Where's your confidence in him making a big but not necessarily big, but more good decision after three pretty poor to various extents, USC decisions, not Lynn Swan decisions.
Yeah, we just don't know enough about lind Swan. But if I had to bet on it, I wouldn't. The confidence meter wouldn't be very high US. He kind of keeps it in the family. You get named like a Jack del Rio who played at USC. People ask me all the time, like who should they hire. It's like, you know, I don't have any power, but I would give you two requirements. One, make it a college head
coach with great success. You know, someone that's been successful in college if you want to look at Matt Campbell or you know whatever, someone that's like, hey, they're a good college coach. Like that's the one thing. Two, someone that doesn't know the USC fight song. Don't hire someone that you're familiar with, like, because then you're only basing it on a resume. Like they just keep hiring people that they know. Uh, I mean just even the athletic directors.
If you dan, if you ever covered a game in the coliseum, if you took the elevator up to the press box, you looked on one side of the elevator, there was a picture of Pat Hayden. You look at the other side of the elevator, there's a picture of Lint Swan, Like those are that's who they hired.
Like you didn't need a search for them.
You just look to see who was on the walls of your press box elevator, and that's who you're going to hire.
Your athletic director. You need to get away from that.
And I'm not sure that Lint Swan and the board of trustees and all they would do something like that.
It's like they feel like it's a circle of the wagon thing.
We're going to get a guy that we know as opposed to taking a chance. I think you said on your preview show where you were comparing Tom Herman I think was to Matt Campbell.
Right, yeah, yeah, And it's like I would love to.
See us do something like that where, yeah, maybe it doesn't work out, but that's someone you can look at it like, Man, they've had some really good success in college.
Let's see what it's like if they step up.
To the next level and they're playing, you know, at a top five or top ten program instead of you know, Iowa State. So I would love to see that. I just don't long answer. I guess I don't r a lot of confidence that they would do that.
What is what do you feel like the view right now of the USC job is externally? I know you might be too close to the situation in LA covering the team every day, but what do you believe the perception is nationally of this USC job?
And it's funny.
We got even USC fans that are really kind of upset with the team, like, oh, no one wants to come coach there, And I don't buy that.
And maybe it's just because I'm around.
But I see, you know, you talk to coaches that are like, oh yeah, if I had that talent, I could do this. I feel like an alpha coach would come in and say, this is an amazing opportunity, Like I couldn't get these kind of players where I.
Was or whatever it is.
I still feel like it's a top five job just because of all the different factors, Like you can recruit well, but it's different than being like in an LSU, there's no Alabama or Georgia outside your door. You're you're the Aliba and there's really not you know, UTLA made a huge hire and Chip Kelly we'll see, you know, they're two and eight, but we'll see how that works out. I mean, I think Chris Peterson's doing an amazing job. I think Oregon, we've seen them have success, they can
do more of that. You can have a Washington State every once in a while, but if you're good at USC, like you can do a lot so I still, Dan, I still look at it as a highly coveted job. If USC would treat it that way, I don't. I don't think the administration necessarily goes out and says, oh, they're they're going to bring in a link if in our Steve circuit, they're not going to go out and get who's the hot name that everyone wants to get
and util I hadn't done that either. This is the first time they did, so we'll see how it works out. But to me, Dan, I still maybe, you know, maybe just because I'm too close to it, but I still feel like it's it's a coveted job that the right coach comes in and you can make magic happen.
Will there come a point where and maybe this is wishful thinking, but will there come a point where USC fans do not compare everything to two thousand and three to twenty ten.
I think for before that they compared everything to like the John McKay years. So there's there's been a like, you know, if you're either really good as a coach or bad at US, like you win a couple of national championships or you don't. And you know, Pete Carroll was one of those guys that did. But you can go back to like Howard Jones in the thirties and John McKay and John Robinson, you know, like they've guys
that have, you know, won Heisman's one trophies. I think if they weren't comparing to Pete Carroll, they would compare it to any of those and that's what they want to kind of get back to, you know, they want to be able to compete. It's it's like winning the PAC twelve South is not on the high on the list of you know, USC fans don't hang.
A bad or anything. They're not really excited at all. You know, we're competing for the PAC twelve South.
And when you have like Clayhilton kind of talking about even this muddled mess of the PAC twelve South and that's your goal, it just it kind of falls on deaf ears. I guess you could say for the USC fan base. I don't think they demand you got to win a championship every other year or something. But if you're at least in that conversation, you want to be nationally relevant because it's it's a program that's set up
to be nationally relevant. And if you if that, if USC is nationally relevant, it helps the whole PAC twelve. You just want to kind of be in that conversation. So I don't know if there will be a time because they're, you know, whoever the next coach, the next coach that wins some championships at USC, they'll probably talk about him too, but they'll always look back to even if it's not Pete Carroll, John McKay, Howard Jones, however you want that's those are the kind of errors they
want to to get going again. There's there have been some good ones, but there's also times of you know, downtimes between those eras.
Are there reasons to believe that if Clay Hilton is back, and I would imagine you think you're right that USC does want to bring him back like they do, not want to go through buyout and search and hoping for the best of the higher works outs. If Clay Helton is back, are there reasons to be confident that the problems USC currently has are fixable with whether it's new coaches, whether it's different recruiting strategy, whether it's change in scheme. Are these short term problems fixable?
I kind of think they are I think that you want to see your head coach kind of develop and learn on the job. But I think maybe some of the lessons have been a little slower for him to pick up. But if it's a situation like a Brian Kelly from a couple of years ago, you know, they were four and eight, he completely redid the staff, yep.
And you know now they're there.
I'm not saying that's something USC can do, but I think they can get a lot better, I mean a lot better than five and five by making some changes. And I think it would have to be bring in a bunch of coaches that you don't know, that are threatening, that that could you know, if you screw up, they could take your job, you know that those kind of things. I think they can fix a lot of the problems.
I'm not sure like he'll get you to the you know, being in the playoff conversation every year, but I think you can win the Pact, win more Pacdorf Championships if you do that, because you will get you know, there'll be a lot of good players there. You get two or three Dealer McCullough made a huge difference just one assistant coach. Yeah, last year, So I think you get
a few more of those. I think you can. I think you could do things that might not make USC fans happy, because then he would win enough games to you know, save his job again. But I think he could fix a lot of that stuff in the in the short term.
Well, they have a new offensive coordinator next year, if Clay Helton is back.
I think that's a big issue because you look at the offense, it's really sort of like a mishmash of what you know, Lane Kiffin had and what the Sarkisian had. Neither one of those guys learned from some spread guru.
You know.
You there's these trees that you have if you watch and guys you know how mummies or whoever they are at the top of the tree. You know, someone like Mike Leech, like, you know, he has this amazing system and if you're an assistant under him, you might learn it and go do it somewhere else. Those guys didn't really learn that from anybody amazing and do it somewhere else. So it's sort of like that's the hot thing. We're
going to figure it out and do it ourselves. So for me, that would be the biggest piece, Dan is that you can't just say we're going to keep running our offense and who you switch somebody out to call plays? I think you bring in someone that just has you know, automated automic automicty.
What am I like?
That's a autonomous auto autonomous system.
Yeah, yes, of control of the offense. That's a I've been speaking a lot later. I think I did like eight hours of podcasting yesterday.
Yeah.
And so somebody would just come in and run their own system. I think that would be a huge, huge help because that would be, you know, one of the bigger pieces that you would need to fix.
I don't know if they're going to do that. I don't have a lot of confidence, but I think.
If they did that, that would be that would be a big, big gain for the team.
That is, that is everything I have in the most I have talked about USC and a rational, mature, hopefully nuanced way, and I appreciate your time. I feel like I've learned a lot. I imagine everybody who has listened has learned a lot. So once again, everybody go out and even if you're just moderately interested in USC and USC football. Ryan does a great job. As Harv hid on there talking USC all year long on the Peristyle podcast.
Check out USC football dot com if you are a fan, if you're a super fan, they will have you covered every day, every hour, all week long, all year long. You could not find a better destination for Trojan news and football. So once again, Ryan, thank you very much for your time. And is it sunny? And it just started snowing here. I am officially just I am gutted right now.
I'm sorry when I when I went out there. Thank you by the way, Dan, you guys do an awesome job, and it's been great to kind of see you guys grow over the years and just you know, when you see you on Sports Center and all that stuff, it's like, this is awesome. I love that solid verbl It's great. But when I came out there, like in the summer or something, right, it wasn't cold or maybe it.
Was a little cold.
It was it was chilly. Yeah, okay, it was chill.
It wasn't like snowy chili though, No, yeah chili, you like chili too. No, It's it's pretty nice here, Sonny and seventy. My wife is down in Tennessee, they got some snow there, so I was okay trolling her a little bit on Twitter, laughing at it. Like I said, I said, there's too much sun glare on my phone. I can't see what your picture is. Can you tell me? And it was a picture of like frost and snow in their yard and stuff. So sorry, sorry that, but you're in New York City.
Yeah, I know it happens. It's okay. I just realized I have to go grocery shopping soon. That's not going to be super pleasant to walk back with. But that's okay. It's a it's a sacrifice forgetting to pay a ton in rent and have rats on your commute, so you know, it's everything's a trade off. Ryan Abraham, on that note, thank you very much for your time and we'll talk soon.
Sounds good, Dan, thank you.
All right, Thanks again to Ryan Abraham. I hope you were able to glean some information, all right, thanks again to Ryan Abraham from USC football dot com. Hopefully you were able to download some of that information and maybe it colors your opinion of where USC stands and what they'll be doing moving forward in a little bit more
complete way. And yeah, it certainly helped for me. I've always have these theories about programs and thoughts, but it you know, we have people that are actually on the ground covering them and are around the team, so it's good to lean on experts every once in a while because Ty and I, while America's college football podcast Sweethearts, are certainly by no means deep into every team. We try to be, but that's sort of an impossible thing with so many teams, So thank you very much for listening.
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