USC Scholarship Situation
USC Scholarship Situation
The impacts of the NCAA sanctions are over where they have needed to Blueshirt recruits for expected openings from attrition for the fall. Now with attrition through disciplinary and undergrad transfer reasons, they dropped from near eighty-five to eighty scholarship players. That includes six walkons given scholarships before or during last season. All five are Seniors without eligibility. USC loses twenty-two Seniors including them.
The early Signing Day added eighteen players to the fall roster. Two more have verbally commited and one kicker (Ben Griffiths) is also expected to sign. They are in excellent shape with Kyle Ford (CB 82%), Enokk Vimahi (92%), and Bru McCoy (84%). With those who have not signed but are expected to and the three above, their class size would be twenty-three. Five of those are currently noted by 247 as early enrollees who would count towards the 2018 class which was nineteen signees.
Expecting a total of six to enroll early counting towards 2018, that would reduce the 2019 class count of eighteen signees to twelve. Counting those two commited but unsigned now and the three overwhelming favoring recruits would be seventeen. The 2019 class could sign eight more therefore.
There will be further attrition to transfers and usually two declaring early for the NFL and redshirt Seniors who graduate and move on. The current Juniors is small - eight - so they may prefer to be selective and to finish the class with four and five star recruits. They have been accepting one or two graduate transfers a year for depth and the secondary is thin. Four of the walkons give scholarships were special teams players,
At this point, their 2019 ranks twenty-first nationally and fourth in the Pac 12. That will certainly change. New staff coaching changes may be attracting other 2019 recruits who have not signed or they may be concentrating on 2020 recruits with the expectation of saving a few scholarships this year and giving more walkons scholarships as well as graduate transfers to get to eighty-five by the fall. They also have drawn one or two per year from the JC ranks, signing one so far.