Lincoln Riley reacts to the possibility of a donor-led USC NIL collective

Trojans coach Lincoln Riley has been vocal in his support of BLVD, the NIL operation USC launched this summer to give third-party representation to its student-athletes in pursuing way to financial opportunities.

But when asked Friday after practice about the emergence of a donor-led NIL collective in the works separate from BLVD -- the Student Body Right collective announced earlier this week by longtime Trojans fan Dale Rech -- Riley didn't denounce it, rather leaving his comments open-ended.

"I think we've had a lot of signs internally that people want to support our program and are excited about what's going on here, so I think that notion is, we're not surprised [by it]," Riley said. "We very much believe in the BLVD concept, not only for what it can do for our student-athletes but also making sure that we stay within the rules and having people that have been in this business and are experts in this field is very, very important to us.

"Listen, this is new for all of us. It's still evolving all kinds of places all over the country and I'm confident we will be able to kind of bring everyone together and make sure it's one united effort."

Speaking at Pac-12 Media Day a couple weeks ago, Riley was emphatic in his support for BLVD, urging all fans to get behind that model.

"My confidence is extremely high. I was introduced to that model when I got hired. We slowed it down a little bit to change and adapt as the landscape adapted, brought some of our concepts in with it," he said. "Obviously, we had a couple people from our football department move over there -- Spencer Harris and Megan Mueller -- to assist Mike Jones and the rest of that team to help build it. We thought it was that important to have people that we're kind of within our walls and understand what we needed to do for our student-athletes so that they were there on a full-time basis. I have total support of it. I think we have some really revolutionary ideas to take advantage of being in L.A. and all the great things that provides. I would encourage all our people to get involved with it."

Riley also emphasized that major point of separation between what Stay Doubted/BLVD does and what a collective does.

"The real game-changer here for us, obviously being able to compensate players, the players being able to earn NIL is a huge part of it, but also every player on our team is going to have a representative. These guys are getting financial literacy, they're getting accounting, they're learning about taxes, they're getting assistance. They're not just being given all these opportunities without the true infrastructure behind it, and that's what this provides," Riley said. "For our people out there, I just hope we're able to get behind it and support it because as a football program and a head coach, I could not be more supportive of it."