This week I wrote about the USC offensive and defensive lines being the main issues for the Trojans.
Let’s look at the 1980 lines for a minute.
Here’s Bruce Matthews blocking for Gordon Adams.
Here’s George Achica chasing John Elway.
Here’s Roy Foster celebrating a touchdown vs. Notre Dame.
Look at the offensive line that started in 1980.
InsideUSC with Scott Wolf 
Yep, SC was loaded back in 1978 (Title) and 1979 (#2) with a carry-over into 1980. Now a school is lucky to attract one or 2 guys of that same caliber
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You’d be lucky to find 1 or 2 big white kids playing football in most of LA County these days
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Budda,
You have St. John Bosco with huge with kids, Notre Dame, chaminade, St. Francis. SF had a huge oline with mostly white kids. Loyola had a couple. That is just a few of the high schools.
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Maybe Wolf could get the demographics of 1980 Southern California to the present to give Riley a better chance of recruiting OL & DL
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When the Feds transferred the aero-space industry to Washington from Southern Cal, that dealt a blow to the type of player pool USC could draw from. Even then, if SC would get, say, their pick of 80% of the top athletes, they would return to dominance. Riley’s unbalanced to Offense and run-only-to-keep defense honest does not build toughness culture. They need a run game to make the OL into dominance (example Michigan).
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Illegal immigration as well as a huge influx of Asian immigrants changed many cities, not many Asian or Hispanic kids play football of the oblong variety
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Anthony Munoz!
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Lol. I knew someone would post that, name the top Hispanic players in So Cal NOW. I’ll wait.
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hate it but we may need to recalibrate our future expectations on USC football. First, the NCAA put USC away almost for good and then USC administration decisions to not fight the corrupt NCAA and subsequent AD’s and head coaching selections, for the most part sealed the deal. Then there’s Lincoln Reilly who really wasn’t the best selection coming off the weak finesse based Helton years. Reillys defensive stats as a head coach were abominable accept perhaps the COVID season. Subconsciously, perhaps consciously, we know LR is not experienced in “team” recruiting, but good at offensive finesse positions, thus we are not going to see anything come about there. We also know he was basically shamed to fire Grinch and bring on some new defensive coaches. His multi year record and retaining sub par coaches spells that out clearly. We are just know making kids gain size at the training table ?
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That first photo looks like Tecmo Bowl.
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