FOOTBALL

The USC Transfer Portal Keeps Buzzing

Ohio State safety Bryson Shaw has committed to USC today.

This is an interesting addition. You could say it’s simply USC adding depth at safety.

But Shaw was third in tackles last season and started 12 games. He had nine tackles in the Rose Bowl against Utah.

Apparently, he knew he wasn’t going to start at Ohio State, which is deep at the position for next season (Josh Proctor, Ronnie Hickman, Kourt Williams, Tanner McCaliste).

This has to be a wake-up call for the USC safeties. Other than Calen Bullock, I doubt the coaches are sold on anyone else. Shaw is leaving Ohio State because he wants to start somewhere else, presumably.

USC has 14 transfers now since Lincoln Riley took over.

59 thoughts on “The USC Transfer Portal Keeps Buzzing”

    1. How about the one that got away??!! The offensive genius Clay Helton’s Georgia Southern’s 1st team offense put up over 450 yards and put up 37 points during the spring game…. USC will regret letting Clay Helton go!

      Riley will usher in the days of sanctions back to usc football.

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  2. Finally! Exactly the type of young pure all American young men we need around here

    Get rid of the thugs and lazy scumbags. We don’t need more fake 5 stars and overrated clowns. More tough hard nosed pure bred FOOTBALL PLAYERS like this please!

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  3. My “Inside USC” teenage son tells me that the ASU rising soph linebacker (all american frosh team last year) will be the next portal commit.

    To paraphrase George Costanza:

    “USCIsBack”

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      2. Thank you, brother, Freudian slip.

        I recalled that George had a “I’m back, baby” moment. So I googled those on youtube, that came up, but what also came up was this one with Frank. I pasted in Frank’s as it seems like the home run.

        That was comedy!

        Liked by 1 person

      3. George’s moment came when he was having trouble getting it up and eating a fresh mango “made it move”. I’M BACK, BABY!!!

        Liked by 1 person

  5. Nothing like great competition. Keep them coming. Free agency is the best. Look what happened to Velus Jones Jr. He was buried in the unfavorites of Helton’s crystal ball and now he’s getting drafted into the NFL.

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  6. LOS ANGELES — Imagine sitting in the stands absorbing sunburn at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on a Saturday in April only 196 days after sitting in the press box at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, where that D.C. guy Caleb Williams steered Oklahoma through the Oklahoma-Texas hostilities along a screaming 54-48 trail. Imagine the sky not just cloudless but that art form of cloudless, L.A. cloudless, and the old clock hands of the 99-year-old coliseum reading about quarter past noon, the old temperature gauge on the other side of the grand facade nudging past 70 but nowhere near 80.

    Now, as Southern California plays Southern California in the spring game, here’s a snippet from the public address announcer:
    “Caleb Williams on the keeper …”
    It’s an epitome of transfer-era reality and some sort of fever dream.
    Spring football, that eccentric pursuit amid the broader eccentric pursuit known as college football, concluded across much of the land this past weekend with public scrimmage games, and the most fever-dreamy spring game must have been USC vs. USC.
    Lincoln Riley, so familiar with Oklahoma, coached for USC, vaguely familiar under his visor while apparently salaried at USC. Williams played for USC after transferring from Oklahoma and, while not salaried technically, was the subject of a sign-of-the-times out on the concourse: “EXCLUSIVE CALEB WILLIAMS APPAREL AVAILABLE HERE.” Running back Travis Dye also played for USC, meaning the quarterback who went 21 for 27 for the winner in the Alamo Bowl less than four months prior (Williams, Oklahoma) and the running back who rushed for 153 yards for the loser (Dye, Oregon) share a backfield at neither Oklahoma nor Oregon.
    How 2022.
    Just to go full fever dream after the game, onto the field stepped the greatest football player ever, Jerry Rice, here because …
    His son Brenden plays for USC.
    Brenden Rice, like Williams and Dye and 10 others, transferred in, meaning the Trojans have transfers from TCU, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Virginia, Auburn, Stanford, Alabama, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma.
    “It’s a little shock for me,” Dye said, “because I was getting flashbacks to when I was in this Coliseum before,” such as the time he gained 55 yards and caught a four-yard touchdown pass for Oregon against USC in the 2020 Pac-12 title game, or when he gained 75 yards in a happy 56-24 thumping in 2019, another time just ducky.

    That’s different from Williams, who followed Riley here and who threw two touchdown passes Saturday to Mario Williams, who also followed Riley here, meaning a 19-year-old who already hopscotched from D.C. to Norman to Los Angeles throwing to another 19-year-old who already hopscotched from Tampa to Norman to Los Angeles.
    “That communication with ’Rio,” Caleb Williams said, “as we all know it goes back to the old school that we were at.”
    Now in the fever dream their country needs them — and their communication — because they might have a chance to lend some geographic variety to a College Football Playoff that has gone sort of stale with three of eight title games between Alabama and Clemson and two more between Alabama and Georgia, making national championships seem less national.
    Come surreal Saturday, the crowd size did seem blasé early. It didn’t seem to match the fervor reputed since Riley’s stunning sign-on Nov. 28, and it didn’t seem a threat to fulfill a parlor game and match the lowest home-game total of the regular season during the forlorn 4-8 of last season, that being a scattered 51,564 for a 45-27 loss to Oregon State.
    But in they trickled and at times maybe even gushed, 33,427 of them, at least somewhat a tell of how excitement can build in America when one guy from Muleshoe moves from Oklahoma to California. (That’s Riley, with Muleshoe in Texas, near the New Mexico border.)
    In one fevered moment, Athletic Director Mike Bohn appeared on the big screen midgame and said, “You’re part of what we believe to be the largest crowd in spring ball history, since the 1990s.” It did not rate with the 40,000 or so for the nongame up at Oregon on Saturday or the 75,000 or so for the nongame at Oklahoma, but this is Los Angeles, famously rich in options and famously indifferent to non-winners.
    So the people who weren’t elsewhere dug into boxes of jerseys and whatnot at a surplus sale on the concourse, with one man reporting 30 percent savings over the norm even if jerseys in general have never been more fleeting. They made a thick passage of a section behind one side of the stadium between some taco stands and some restrooms. They ordered from food trucks such as the Lebanese Pickles and Peas, or they sat watching in their old jerseys of Lynn Swann, Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen, Reggie Bush — shirts that say from the audience, “You really should win.”

    In a helmet with Trojan feathering makeshift on top, there walked that rare kind of USC fan: a recently gained one. Miguel Cervantes has an excuse for that: He’s in USC’s masters business program for veterans. He feels “super pumped” and said, “I can feel the energy difference coming from last year to this year — a huge change.”
    Down on the field after halftime, quarterback Miller Moss, a redshirt freshman from Los Angeles who has not transferred, threw a pretty 48-yard touchdown pass to Kyle Ford, a redshirt junior from greater Los Angeles who has not transferred.
    Eventually players signed autographs on the field and went down the tunnel to the interview dais, five of them at one point, shoulder to shoulder and including three transfers, Caleb Williams and Dye and Shane Lee, the former Alabama linebacker who said, “It’s been amazing to see the progress since I got here.”
    As they spoke, a mind long addled with college football might struggle to remember where all they had been, a most kinetic generation and all the wiser for it. When they speak of building a culture, they’re talking rapid construction. “We’ve worked our ass off the last four-and-a-half months,” Riley said while still 38 himself, “to build a culture and to build a standard for our program that we believe in.” He noted they would need more players inbound, but he said: “The point really has to be understood: The guys that we have right now have set the foundation. The guys that we have right now we are thrilled about.”
    Once Riley departed the room, Caleb Williams went on about culture for impressive paragraphs rather than throwaway lines, his voice now old enough for all to hear (unlike as a freshman under interview restrictions at Oklahoma). He said, “A big part of it is being coachable, and sometimes you’ve just got to eat it,” and he explained how “elite teams are led by the players, held accountable by the players.”
    They’ve got the leadership council thing going, such that Moss said: “Just as someone who was here last year and went through that, I don’t think we lacked the players and the personalities within the locker room to have good leadership. I just think there wasn’t a forum that fostered leadership. I think with Coach Riley and his staff coming in, we’ve been given a playbook so to speak on how to do that and structure within that.”
    Maybe they, like Oregon or Utah or somebody fresh, will up and help out the country at large. Spring games always do brim with dreams, however confusing.

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    1. Dear Whomever Wrote Above Article,
      That’s Miguel de Cervantes to you.
      And, by the time Don Quixote wraps up, he’s the only one in the book you care about.
      USC dreams will come true.

      Liked by 1 person

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    3. This one came from the Bezos Post at the request of the Prince of Darkness on High himself, Keyser Söze.

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  7. The New York Times is reporting Helton & Swann were on the Chinese Communist Party’s payroll. Their Mission? Destroy college football…
    #..And,AfterThat,TheWorld…

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    1. The name “Charles Clay Helton” is now identified in the House Special Select Committee’s Investigation over the 2016 campaign, with nearly as many citations as ‘Hillary Clinton’, and ‘Russian influence’.”

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      1. No criminal convictions will come outta any of the investigations into Hillary or Biden — but the next 4 years’ worth of depositions, interrogatories & hearings will destroy them financially….
        #Helton,OnOtherHand,MayWellBeBroughtBeforeAFiringSquad

        Liked by 1 person

      4. Do some research on Ron Brown’s plane crash —he’s involved in a fraud scheme as Secretary of Commerce under Bill, just as investigations get underway, his plane crashes, no one but Secret Service is allowed anywhere near the wreckage for days —then it turns out the pilot who was supposed to be at the controls of the ill-fated plane called in sick —so his buddy flies the plane and winds up dead with Ron Brown….and, then, the original pilot feels SO terrible about the crash that….he ….commits…”Suicide.”
        How many times does this family get away with it?

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      5. Lee Harvey Oswald
        James Wilkes Booth
        Sirhan Sirhan with an asterisk (2 for 1)
        John Wayne Gacy (if we go to the serial side of crime)

        Liked by 1 person

  8. Wouldn’t you think Helton would be somewhat embarrassed by what is happening at USC, like it is totally exposing him for the fraud he was and is. I doubt he even realizes that LR made changes because he hasn’t taken time to “look at the film”. I personally cannot wait to see this team gel and develop into something special. Are we surprised Chip hasn’t done the same thing at sucla? Or are they cancelling football and just mailing it in like they did last season.

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    1. UCLA’s Last Hope: Lincoln is offered and accepts open NFL job in November….and Chip gets to face Donte Williams….
      #DonteProvesHe’sGreatSport…
      #..JustLikeLastYear..
      #…ByEmbracingChipAfterGettingFacePlantedInMudAgain

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      1. The NFL would be smart to leave Riley alone. The USC NFL pipeline that Helton treated like Biden has treated the oil pipeline, is being rebuilt. The value of having Riley in L.A. is immeasurable.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. Dont college coaches make more than NFL coaches now? Why would any college coach want to go to the NFL? At USC Riley will get the #1 recruiting class every year from now on. That is like being given a ton of first round draft picks every year in the NFL.

        The NFL is for coaches that love schematics, but dont like having to develop kids or schmooze kids. Riley will be at USC for a nice long while.

        Liked by 3 people

      7. Speaking of research, this just in from the team doctor asked to find cause of Chip’s recent bowel pains:
        “Stomach Analysis found:
        -3 Jelly donuts
        – 5 Hot dogs
        -2 Pork Ribs
        -11 Slices Of Banana Cream Pie
        -4 orders of Cheese Fries
        -2 Strawberry shakes
        -A package of Tums —
        Nothing out of the ordinary —cause for pain unexplained.”

        Liked by 1 person

      9. Well, at least Chip’s stomach wasn’t full of what Rod Stewart’s was rumored to have been full of about 40 years ago.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. steveg —Helton is too evil to care [and the Georgia Southern A.D. is too dumb to care] about how completely he’s being exposed by Lincoln Riley ….

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    3. I now see the reason Clay took the lowly Georgia Southern job – once a new coach arrived at USC, the totality of the Helton shit show would emerge. And once that happened, Clay wouldn’t be able to be a grad assistant at West LA College (Owns’ alma mater, so they say).

      So he jumped at Georgia Southern before the entire world of college sports saw through him.

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      2. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment, T Bruins…..
        #WatchGameWithCaringFriends..
        #….SkilledInGriefCounseling

        Liked by 1 person

    1. I’d say Caleb showed he was the real deal at Oklahoma and all through high school…..
      #USCLuckedOutWithRileyAndTheWilliamsGuys….
      #They’llMakeBohnLookBetterThanHeDeserves
      #[WhichIsOkayW/Me…AsLongAsWeDon’tHaveToHearHimTalk]…

      Liked by 1 person

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    1. “Minus the food, marketing booths and roughly 1,500 fans who showed up at Drake Stadium on a cool Saturday morning, it really was just another UCLA football practice.”

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  13. CBS: May 1 marks the day the transfer portal shuts down for this academic year. It closes for three months before reopening Aug. 1, the start of the 2022-23 academic year. Players in the portal by May 1 can still transfer after that date.

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