When wide receiver Brenden Rice put his name in the transfer portal this offseason, after two years at Colorado, he was still working through some second thoughts and uncertainty about what he wanted to do.
Then Lincoln Riley called.
"When I hopped in the portal I was still shaky about it -- I thought about going back to Colorado. Next thing you know I'm on the phone with Lincoln in the first 30 minutes, 15 minutes. I'm like, 'Wow, OK.' He tells me 'Come.' I get a couple other calls, but as soon as I heard Lincoln call, you kind of have to go, especially being in a situation like 'SC, biggest names, biggest wide receivers, you've got to come, you have to," Rice shared after practice last week.
Rice was back home in Texas getting a workout in when the call came. He wasn't expecting to be contacted so quickly after entering the portal -- especially from one of the top offensive-minded coaches in college football.
"It was quick. Like, I was shocked. Next thing you know I'm on the phone with Lincoln, I'm like, 'Bro, I just talked to Lincoln Riley. Oh yeah, I'm going to 'SC.' ... I went straight to my mother, texted my dad, 'I'm going to Cali.' I texted Jerry, 'Yeah, I'm going to Cali, I'm coming up there with you.'"
Jerry, of course, would be Jerry Rice. The Jerry Rice. The Pro Football Hall of Famer, the legend many consider to be the best wide receiver to ever play the game.
Brenden Rice is guarded when it comes to that subject. As he told Cronkite News in 2019 during his recruiting process, he and his father have never lived together and his father wasn't always a major presence in his life early on.
Asked about their relationship now, Rice says, "It's getting better, that's all I'm going to say."
He knows that as a college football receiver, being the son of a legend at the same position is always going to be part of the narrative, but he doesn't want it to be the focus of his own football story.
