Taomi, who came to St. Joseph High in Santa Maria his junior year of high school, signed with USC Wednesday after a year at Hancock College.
LOS ANGELES — The first time he talked to Erwin Taomi about taking him in, Mark Crisp sat the 17-year-old down in his living room and asked him about his goals. It was standard practice. Crisp would ask this of any of his kids. You had to work hard, in the Crisp family, to earn your keep.He sat on Crisp’s couch in Santa Maria, California that day, three years ago, with little to his name.
For three years, hosted under the Crisp’s roof, the Alaska native pounded sheets of broccoli and chicken. He lost 25 pounds his first year at St. Joseph. He lost 15 pounds the second. He played the third at nearby Hancock College, a JUCO program, returning to St. Joseph’s often to run gassers and lift weights.
Taomi, though, has been targeted by USC for more than a month. In previous summers, he’d received a wealth of interest from Division I coaches, seeing his frame and kicking off a conversation. Lose 50 or so pounds, they’d tell him, and they’d offer him on the spot. So Taomi showed up to a camp at Sacramento State in mid-June weighing about 335 pounds, with USC’s offensive-line coach Josh Henson in attendance.
Even as the offensive line seemed an obvious position of need, with a massive youth movement waiting in the wings behind two veteran prospective starters like Jonah Monheim and Emmanuel Pregnon, USC largely stood pat in the spring portal. On Wednesday, Riley emphasized it was a sign that former recruits — take redshirt freshmen like Elijah Paige and Tobias Raymond — were “ready to play.”
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