All Philip Riley needed was to visit campus. When the consensus four-star cornerback first committed to Notre Dame in May, he had yet to travel to South Bend. He still hadn’t in late September when he de-committed and promptly flipped to USC, but he stayed in touch with the Irish coaching staff, most notably cornerbacks coach Mike Mickens and defensive coordinator Clark Lea.
Riley (Bloomingdale High School; Valrico, Fla.) could not meet with Mickens or Lea when he visited Notre Dame at the end of October, not during an extended dead period mandated by the NCAA for obvious reasons, yet he saw enough to reverse his Trojan decision and rejoin the Irish class of 2021 on Monday.