Rivals has unveiled its long-awaited comprehensive team recruiting rankings, combining both traditional high school recruiting with transfer portal recruiting.
It's an especially useful reference point when evaluating USC's recruiting efforts, as the Trojans have mined the transfer portal about as well as any program in the country the last two years.
Which is why USC ranks No. 3 behind only Alabama and Georgia in the new joint rankings for 2023 with 36 combined newcomers this year, including three five-stars and 15 four-stars.
USC finished 7th in HS recruiting and 8th in portal recruiting, whereas Alabama was No. 1 in HS recruiting and 76th in portal recruiting with only five transfers and Georgia was No. 2 in HS recruiting and 78th in portal recruiting with only four transfers.
The Trojans, meanwhile, signed 22 high school prospects and 14 transfers. This is for the class that is already on campus now -- not the ongoing 2024 recruiting class still in the works.
Especially as he's gone about remaking this USC roster since taking over in December, 2021, Lincoln Riley and his staff have been aggressive in the portal to both plug immediate holes and find young talents like new five-star DT addition Bear Alexander (from Georgia) to develop.
Now that the Trojans have established a consistent ability to lure top transfers, expect it to remain equally as important as what they do in HS recruiting. Maybe the balance will shift a little further to the HS side as years move on and there aren't major roster holes needing instant Band-Aids, but as long as Riley and crew believe they can land the Bear Alexanders and Dorian Singers and MarShawn Lloyds and Mason Cobbs and Jarrett Kingstons, etc., from the portal it's going to remain a major emphasis in their roster-building efforts.
Trojans defensive coordinator Alex Grinch summed it back in December when he said this:
"The main thing as we evaluate guys, we're telling high school guys when we're recruiting, we're basically evaluating them against every guy that we think we can get in the transfer portal. You're not being evaluated against, in this particular case, the '23 class," he said.
And the result in that 2023 cycle was a top-three national class, per the Rivals rankings.
