USC appears to be in good position to add CB Elijah Rodgers as a transfer walk-on from Gardner-Webb this summer. The Blacksburg native signed with Indiana out of high school but never played for the Hoosiers. He transferred to Gardner-Webb last summer and played mostly on special teams. He is in the NCAA Transfer Portal and he visited USC in April.
“If Tennessee and Notre Dame don’t let me know anything this week, I’ll probably end up at Carolina,” Rodgers said Tuesday. “Just waiting to get accepted now. I sent my transcript yesterday. Notre Dame hasn’t been back in contact in about a week or so. Last I heard from them, they wanted to know my GPA and if I was in the portal. UT said they’d let me know something this week. They were on me when their old cornerback coach was there but he left, so the coach I was in contact with brought my name back up to the cornerback coach that’s there now .”
Rodgers said the Vols and Irish have been talking scholarship offers to him, which means he would need a waiver from the NCAA to be able to play this season. Based on new NCAA transfer rules, he believes as a walk-on he’d be able to play right away at USC.
“Seeing these guys get denied the waiver is also playing a role too,” he said. “If I go to Carolina, I won’t have to sit a year versus trying a waiver anywhere else. If I sit, it’ll be basically sitting two years in a row and that isn’t what I want to do. Trying to compete right away. Trob (Travaris Robinson) talked on the phone with my dad 2 days ago saying that I have a great opportunity ahead of me if I end up being there.”
Rodgers said he will finalize his plans by the end of this month.
Rodgers was a Shrine Bowl selection in 2017 as a cornerback. BYU and Purdue were two other schools to show strong recruiting interest in him at that time.
