WR CJ Williams reflects on wild end to recruitment ahead of announcement

SAN ANTONIO -- As one of the top wide receiver prospects in his class, CJ Williams had spent almost three years navigating through the recruiting process while thinking he had it all sorted out when he committed to Notre Dame in August.

Instead, everything about his recruitment changed in the last month or so, and now Williams will announce a final decision between USC and UCLA on Saturday during the All-American Bowl (live on NBC).

"It's tricky. There's a lot of different variables coming into it. I didn't know that the recruiting process or just college football was like that in general. I was just a wide-eyed open kid and I got the realness handed to me pretty early and I kind of realized you've got to do what's best for yourself," Williams said Tuesday after his first day of All-American Bowl practice. "... You can't rely on anyone other than yourself or your family. I feel happy, I feel good that it's coming to end and I'll be done. I'm officially done and I've got the sigh of relief that I'll be closer to home than before, whether it's UCLA or USC."

The thought of staying close to home had always appealed to Williams, but it wasn't a necessity, and with regard to USC, well, there were obvious questions about the culture within the program and the overall direction of Trojans football.

Enter new coach Lincoln Riley and the most surprising hire of the 2021 college football coaching carousel.

Meanwhile, Brian Kelly sent similar shockwaves through the sport when he left Notre Dame for LSU at the end of November.

With all of that, Williams took a step back and a fresh look, decommitted from the Fighting Irish on Dec. 13, and in a lot of ways started the recruiting process over.

In an in-depth interview with TrojanSports.com on Tuesday, he said he had actually already started thinking a little differently even before Riley was hired and Kelly bolted to Baton Rouge.

"I would say it was even before this Coach Riley hire. There was talks of a coach coming in, whether it was [Luke] Fickell from Cincinnati, or the guy from Iowa State, I knew there was going to be a guy that was going to set the culture and set the program back to what we all see USC as in the past," Williams said. "That's when I was kind of like, OK, maybe, with this new age of USC coming and all the hype around it and all these people wanting USC football to be legit again and at its peak performance, that's when I really realized that USC is a possibility.

"Obviously, it's my hometown school and it's less than an hour from my house, less than 35-40 minutes from my high school. I needed to see them put a commitment into the football program -- through not only a coaching hire but also through all the different things they're trying to do."