Welcome to the latest episode of the shamrock.

I'm Pete Sampson.

Joined, as always, from my co-host, Matt Fortuna.

And joining us from somewhere around greater Los Angeles is Anatoio Morales, our USC beatwriter at The Athletic.

Antonio, thanks for making some time this week.

And, yeah, it's the first time since this has been a top 25 game in L.A. since 2006,

when it was Brady Quinn v. John David Booty, things have changed a little bit for both programs.

But I don't think there's a program in college football that has changed more in the last 12 months than USC.

And we both cover Notre Dame, which would be high on that list.

But in terms of the, man, the Lincoln Riley Revolution, or whatever we want to call it, what has it been like to sort of be on the ground covering it and sort of documenting how a team went from

just a drift in college football to suddenly in position to play its way into the college football

playoff?

Well, they kind of represent like all the touch points that were like a major topic of discussion all offseason you have the coaching

salaries the rising coaching salaries and lincoln's at the forefront of that you have the transfer

portal and just roster movement and everything like that

and they brought it 20 transfers and got right of 20 20 more guys basically processed 20 more guys

um they had the whole coaching staff is new except for Dante Williams, who you guys remember said

USC just ran out of time last year.

And then there's the NIL aspect, which is like USC is painted as like an NIL

bogeyman, but if you ask their fans, they're not doing enough in NIL.

What's NIL?

We don't know about that.

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