Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — Hundreds of acres of soil and cropland sit unclaimed around the main road through Muleshoe, Texas, where there is one pharmacy and two grocery stores and two main banks.

The land is cheaper, and there are swaths of it, near Lincoln Riley’s small hometown. A couple of miles northwest of the city center, you could buy a plot of about 160 acres for just over $350,000. Travel a few miles further south, and you could snap up 174 acres of dirt and cornfield for about $300,000. And there are no big-time FBS schools within close shouting distance of Muleshoe, but open acres are plentiful in the South; if you were a blue-blood football program seeking to build a new facility somewhere, as Riley put it, it would be easy to simply buy up a cornfield.

“Here, as we all know,” Riley told reporters on USC’s practice field on Friday morning, “our cornfields cost a little bit more.”

Precisely, it will cost $200 million, as USC athletic director Jen Cohen pinpointed in a Friday State of Troy address to the university community, to construct the new and long-planned Football Operations and Performance Center, which will be constructed on a plot that will rip up one of the old stretches of grass at Howard Jones Field. And Riley beamed when asked about it Friday, reflecting back on the first day he strolled through those doors at Howard Jones three years ago, a football program in need of an overhaul both cultural and cosmetic.

The first step in that overhaul, a brand new stretch of turf, was officially released to USC on Thursday for the first day of camp on Friday. Look at it now, the head coach marveled. And the updated renderings for further developments, construction on the facility itself expected to be finished by the summer of 2026, had given Riley “chill-bumps.”

“A long ways from, what, November ’21, right,” he smiled.

A long ways, in everything. New turf. New defensive staff. New conference, the first official day of USC’s Big Ten entry coming on Friday.

Same standard, though, from when Riley walked in the door from Oklahoma and verbally preached championships. Kind of.

A gold-lettered “B1G” logo adorned Riley’s red hoodie at USC’s first day of fall camp, a stark reminder of a new reality, the start of a transitional year that presents a murky future and hazy expectations.

Riley emphasized in Indianapolis last week at the Big Ten media days that the goal was to win, and always is, but the head coach has spent the past two weeks of media appearances emphasizing the program’s continual “rebuild” after the surprising high of 2022 and crushing low of 2023.

Upside is high, but more questions exist on the roster than immediate certainties, from prospective QB1 Miller Moss’ readiness to depth at the lines of scrimmage.

“No limitations on what we can do,” Riley said Friday, part of an answer when asked when he felt his program would truly be firing on all cylinders. “There’s definitely no patience. There’s an incredible sense of urgency, but you also understand that the key is everybody involved, we can’t ever get down when one thing doesn’t go perfect.”

Excitement swelled, still, with the changing tides on Friday, strong beacons of promise shining from a number of areas. Ja’Kobi Lane, a 6-foot-4 receiver expected to play a key role after a two-touchdown performance in December’s Holiday Bowl victory, came skipping across the crosswalk on McClintock Ave and into Howard Jones and screaming, “LET’S GO!”

The sophomore is up 15 pounds from his freshman season and looks it, part of a program cultivated by strength trainer Bennie Wylie that has set the college football world abuzz. Every position of the roster has been bulked up as the physicality of the Big Ten looms, from promising running back Quinten Joyner (11 pounds up from his 2023 weight) to edge breakout candidate Braylan Shelby (20 pounds) to mainstay center Jonah Monheim (10 pounds).

In Indianapolis, Riley said USC’s defensive linemen had put on 300 cumulative pounds in the first two months of the offseason, and on Friday asserted the roster had put on 1,400 pounds total.

“Really a phenomenal transformation by our strength staff, nutrition staff, medical, everybody that was involved in the offseason because this was a major shift, philosophy change, especially defensively,” Riley said Friday. “To get these bodies equipped to do it was a big step.”

Optimism brews, as well, around USC’s NIL collective House of Victory after a shaky first couple of years into the NIL space. In that State of Troy address Friday, Cohen stated House of Victory’s funding was “more than double” from the previous year. A source with knowledge of the situation told the Southern California News Group that House of Victory had more than $12 million in funding for 2024-25.

“I’m not happy with it. I’m thrilled with it, I’m thrilled with it,” Riley said Friday when asked if he was happy with House of Victory’s situation heading into the season.

“We’re talking substantial, substantial gains, momentum, and not just in the dollar figure but how we operate – the confidence of our team and our program in it, of our recruits,” Riley continued, a few words later. “I mean, it’s just, it couldn’t be higher.”

Construction will break ground on that new facility, too, before long.

“This has been needed for a long time,” Riley said Friday. “You want your facilities … you want it to mirror the program. And how important the program is to the school, to Los Angeles, to college football, to history, all the success it’s had, like, you want that to be a reflection.”

“And here in about, a little over a year or a little under a year and a half, it’s gonna be.”

The question, as Year Three of the Riley era began on that new turf on Friday, is whether the program itself can live up to that reflection – and that monetary commitment – in that timeframe, too.

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