How USC’s changing NIL approach will impact football recruiting under Lincoln Riley
It’s been an interesting couple of years in the NIL space at USC. There have been starts and stops, and a reluctance from the university to have a collective led to there being three NIL outfits at one time. Now, there’s a new athletic director at USC in Jen Cohen amid various rule changes across college sports.
On Tuesday, Lincoln Riley said NIL has taken “some massive, massive jumps here in the last several months.” Over the weekend, a program source indicated that USC’s main donor collective House of Victory’s budget had grown three times more than what it was last year.
More dramatically, though, a shift in philosophy in on the way. There’s been a lot of risk aversion from USC’s administration regarding NIL in past years. That is the result of lingering effects from the Reggie Bush scandal that culminated with heavy NCAA sanctions against the program.
So USC never fully threw itself into NIL in terms of using it with high school athletes. But after recent court rulings have prevented the NCAA from enforcing NIL rules, House of Victory will now be able to speak with high school athletes and engage them in NIL opportunities before they enroll.
