LOS ANGELES — The coaches would come through Draper, Utah, and whisper promises to Jerome Myles of the role he could play, of a starting slot in their receiver rooms once he arrived on campus, and the 2025 five-star kid took it all with a grain of salt.
Except when it came from USC’s Lincoln Riley.
“He shot straight,” Myles told the Southern California News Group, a top-ranked receiver recruited by the best in the country. “And he was able to show proof that I will be able to start my freshman year. And that was definitely a big factor.”
And thus, on a 247Sports livestream Wednesday morning from Utah’s Corner Canyon High, Myles picked up a Utah hat before pump-faking and announcing a commitment to USC. It’s a massive add, securing a verbal pledge from one of the top receivers in the country, Myles stepping in — with some variance in evaluation of 2026-turned-2025 QB Julian Lewis — as USC’s consensus highest-rated recruit in the class of 2025.
Riley, Myles said, was the main coach who’d communicated with him in recruitment to USC, a notable interest for a coach who is normally known as being more hands-on with quarterbacks. And the proof Riley showed him in his ability to go in “immediately” and make an impact, as Myles put it, was simple: USC won’t have many veteran receivers on its roster come 2025.
“I know,” Myles said, too, “he’ll always have a quarterback to get the ball to me.”
The 6-foot-2, 210-pound Myles has missed time in each of the past two seasons, but racked up 246 yards and four touchdowns in two games with Corner Canyon before suffering a knee injury. His blend of collegiate-ready size and speed is tantalizing, running the fastest 100-meter dash in Utah state history at 10.36 seconds in spring 2024, and adds to a deep USC 2025 receiver class bristling with potential weapons from across the nation: Texas’ Tanook Hines, Missouri’s Corey Simms and Baltimore’s Romero Ison.
USC’s upcoming class had looked thin this summer after Georgia five-star defensive linemen Justus Terry and Isaiah Gibson de-committed and the program missed out on several top targets. But since then, USC has added a splash of commitments from the South, with four-stars like Georgia linebacker Jadon Perlotte, Georgia safety Kendarius Reddick and Florida linebacker Ty Jackson, not to mention top-ranked Georgia 2026 linebacker Xavier Griffin.
“That perception, in my opinion, is at an all-time high, right,” Griffin’s agent Brandon Nabors said of families’ recruiting view of USC in the South. “Because, they really understand that, by USC jumping over to the Big Ten, that’s showing that USC is not afraid of playing with high-level competition.”
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Third-party NIL collective House of Victory’s operation, though, has notably stabilized in recent months after a rocky couple of years, adding new emphasis on pursuing higher-level donations from donors to land top recruits and operating on a budget of more than $12 million for the 2024-25 year.
“They went over all that stuff with us,” Myles said, when asked about his comfort with House of Victory and NIL opportunities through his recruiting process. “They made it to where me and my family could be comfortable.”
USC’s offensive output through two games in 2024, has encouraged Myles, too, with no step lost from Caleb Williams’ Heisman days in the transition to a Miller Moss-led unit.
“This year, I feel like, them being able to prove that they can be good without a star like Caleb Williams,” Myles said, “proves that they’re one of the best programs in the country.”