Tunnel Vision: The USC football recruiting machine is rolling plus our assistant coach brunch recap

On this latest edition of Tunnel Vision USCFootball.com's Ryan Abraham, Shotgun Spratling and new intern Riley Sager are back in studio to discuss everything happening in the world of USC football, from recruiting to what all 12 assistant football coaches had to say this week at the media brunch.

Our team starts off talking about the nearly unbelievable turnaround for USC football recruiting, both from the high school ranks and the NCAA Transfer Portal. Over the past five days the Trojans have picked up as many commits, four from high school and one from the portal. Things got started on Wednesday with three-star receiver Roderick Tezeno, Thursday USC added five-star offensive tackle Keenyi Pepe, Friday was four-star corner Elbert Hill, Saturday three-star receiver Luc Weaver before UCF transfer cornerback Chasen Johnson picked USC on Sunday.

Lincoln Riley and his crew have the No. 1 ranked recruiting class for 2026 and it isn't close, with 27 commitments and nearly 295 points (Notre Dame is second with 14 commits and 236 points). The efforts to focus on high school recruiting by new general manager Chad Bowden is paying off and the Trojans are not slowing down on the recruiting trail.

On the team side, we were able to meet with 12 assistants on Wednesday at USC's media brunch, two hours of interviews that we filmed and uploaded to our YouTube page. We were able to gain a lot of insight into what the plan is for the off-season to turn things around on the field in 2025. Shotgun also spent the morning at the Under Armour Next Camp in Mission Viejo and shares his thoughts on how the Trojan commitments and targets performed, including defensive line MVP Simote Katoanga out of Santa Margarita (Calif.) and offensive line MVP Chase Deniz out of San Diego (Calif.) Cathedral Catholic.

They will also talk about Riley's decision to let Director of Football Sports Performance Bennie Wylie go and head in a different direction for future of USC football strength and conditioning.

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