USC football head coach Lincoln Riley and his team effectively kissed their College Football Playoff hopes goodbye with consecutive losses to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Utah Utes. Despite the continued brilliance of reigning Heisman Trophy winner and prospective number one NFL draft pick Caleb Williams, USC has been unable to live up to expectations during the 2023 season, causing Riley to turn at least some of his attention back to the recruiting trail in hopes of retooling the program.

Some have wondered whether Riley takes a different approach to recruiting as it pertains to local and national recruits.

“As far as recruiting, whether it be national or local, to me it's kind of all the same,” said Riley, per Antonio Morales of The Athletic. “How do you build the best roster you can of the guys that are available to go recruit? Because at the end of the day, if you go win the National Championship and you have a roster mixed from all over the country, nobody's going to say ‘ah, well, that's great you won a national championship but you don't have 80 percent local guys.' The flip side is if you don't have a good year, they're not going to say, ‘well, at least he has a bunch of California kids on the team.'”

USC football fans certainly won't complain if Riley plans to look far and wide across the United States and even the world in hopes of bringing his program into true national championship contention in the near future.