Travis Dye, Southern California Football News: Draft Scout Player News

08/12/22 - RB Travis Dye, rSr/2023, Southern California

Travis Dye is finally a USC Trojan, after four years as an Oregon Duck and a few months of mixed emotions within the process of change. The puzzle is why it had to take four years for the former Norco High standout to find his way back home. The Trojans - the Clay Helton Trojans - certainly had their chance to recruit him. Dye was an All-CIF Division 2 performer as a runner, receiver and returner at Norco in 2017, and he was that season's Big VIII Offensive Player of the Year in a league that features perennial power Corona Centennial, a school that has sent multiple stars to USC including current Trojans Korey Foreman, Gary Bryant Jr. and Tuasivi Nomura. So, Dye was asked last week, how hard did the Trojans try to recruit him out of Norco? "Not at all," he said.

Did he want them to? "Of course," he said. "I was always a big USC fan. My older brother (Tony, a safety) went to UCLA (2008-11), and so it would have been sweet from the jump to come to USC. But I was never a highly recruited running back coming out of high school. I had two offers, Oregon and New Mexico State, and I wasn't going to go play for New Mexico State, no disrespect." Danna Dye, Travis' mother - and an athletic trainer at Corona Centennial, before taking a leave of absence this school year to more closely follow not only Travis but middle brother Troy Dye, a linebacker with the Minnesota Vikings - noted that USC recruited Troy only late in the game, and he wound up playing at Oregon from 2016-19. And her thought was that USC not recruiting Travis out of high school, while frustrating, was probably for the best. "I'm not going to say I was sad that they didn't recruit him because I was not very impressed with the previous staff," she said in a phone conversation this week. - Orange County Register

rSr/2023