{"id":818056,"date":"2026-03-17T23:46:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/818056\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T23:46:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:46:28","slug":"matt-leinart-sets-the-record-straight-on-jersey-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/818056\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Leinart sets the record straight on jersey drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

The USC football<\/a> program is one of the most storied in the entire country. They have had legends come through that program, including Matt Leinart. He won the Heisman Trophy in 2004 and was a national champion. In response to his accolades, the Trojans retired his jersey. However, there was recently some talk of his jersey potentially being unretired, but he declined<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There appears to be some confusion about USC football head coach Lincoln Riley<\/a> asking Leinart to unretire his jersey for a recruit that came into the program, but Leinart shut that down. He said that the USC coach never asked him<\/a>, but others have before, and his answer is always the same.<\/p>\n

He posted on X: \u201cCoach Riley hasn\u2019t asked me if a recruit can wear my number so we can settle that right now. I\u2019ve been asked in the past before and have said the same thing every time. This isn\u2019t a big deal! Fight On.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leinart shared on an episode of his \u201cThrowbacks with Matt Leinart & Jerry Ferrara\u201d podcast last Thursday that there have been \u201cmultiple times\u201d people at USC have asked him to unretire his jersey for a prospect.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018absolutely f\u2014ing not.’ I am never going to unretire for some random dude, who by the way, now could wear No. 11 and transfer after a year,\u201d Leinart\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

He also added he would do it only for his son, Cole, who committed\u00a0to\u00a0SMU\u00a0in November 2024, or his other two boys if they played football and went to USC.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting that the retired number of a former Trojan great has been worn at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in recent memory. Carson Palmer won the Heisman Trophy in 2002, and USC retired his No. 3 jersey in 2003.<\/p>\n

Jordan Addison first wore No. 3 in high school because of Calvin Ridley, his favorite receiver, and continued to wear it in college. However, he had to ask Palmer to wear it, and he received his blessing after transferring from Pittsburgh to USC in 2022<\/a> after a Biletnikoff Award win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The USC football program is one of the most storied in the entire country. They have had legends…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,6106,4436,49,48,8937],"class_list":["post-818056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-lincoln-riley","tag-matt-leinart","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-usc-football"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116247185503208310","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}