To say that it has been a rough few months for the USC Trojans would be a massive understatement. The Trojans just wrapped up an incredibly disappointing 6-6 regular season, and are headed for the Las Vegas Bowl rather than the playoff. Meanwhile, recruiting has not been nearly good enough, and the program has lost a significant number of players in the transfer portal.

On his show last week, college football analyst Josh Pate of CBS Sports discussed the current state of the Trojans.

“Let’s pretend it’s 2010,” Pate said. “I come to you and I give you a vision of the future of college football. And I tell you, we will have wide open free agency. There will be no cap on spending. And players will move all over the place at their discretion.

“I think USC would’ve terrified you. I think if I saw a vision of the future of college football, I would’ve thought, USC’s gonna be unstoppable . . . USC’s gonna dominate. They’re gonna go scorched Earth.

“And here we are all those years later, and that’s the format, and USC sucks.”

It should be noted that Pate has been relatively bullish on Lincoln Riley in the past. Hence, the fact that he is now skeptical of his ability to succeed at USC is a major cause for concern.

To Riley’s credit, he has landed several key transfer targets in recent days, while also securing the return of two of USC’s best players for 2025. But the Trojans will need to do a lot more than that if they want to be legitimate contenders next season and beyond.