Brenden Rice, USC Wide Receiver

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Saw a great campaign the other day on behalf of Breathe Right and it was Jerry Rice, the GOAT, having a little trivia competition with his son who's a star wide receiver at USC in Brendan Rice. And Brendan, you didn't do that bad of a job knowing about your old man. Appreciate the time. Thanks for it. And how are you? I'm great. Thank you for having me Zach.

Well, let me start you off with this. Like everyone knows you're the son of Jerry Rice. You probably get like tired just hearing questions about your dad. But when did you realize growing up that man, my dad's a pretty big deal and he's the greatest wide receiver, one of the greatest football players of all time. I was just about eight years old when I was going around class like, Hey, my dad's Jerry Rice. Like thinking like, Oh, like, this is crazy. And just really looking up to some of the accolades and the stuff that he's done.

He's a natural born leader and leads by example. It's always something that I've always wanted to incorporate in my game and go ahead and develop the attributes within my game and move forward. Did you feel pressure like at a young age to try to go play football? This is always going to be pressure and a kid like that is always gonna feel the pressure. But growing up, I felt as though like, Hey, like if you go ahead and put the work ethic forward, that the pressure is going to lay off and you're going to look at it as a blessing because a lot of people don't have that type of pressure, don't have that dad, that's a hall of fame. And so you got to take it, take it as a blessing. How'd you fall in love with the game?

So it could become a blessing for you. I fell in love with the game at such an early age. I played tackle football before I ever played fat flag football. So just seeing how, how my whole family was really into the game of football, even my sister played it. And my sister was actually a ball player than all of us. I would have to say she was a lot more dominant and used to make the little boys cry.

So football was just, oh, go ahead. So you probably had to draw some inspiration from your sister, right? She kind of set the way. Oh yeah, most definitely.

She set the way for all of us. That's awesome. Brendan Rice here with us. How would you describe your game?

Like we've seen you play a little bit at Colorado the last two years, you got a whole lot more attention, especially this year at USC, but if someone's never seen Brendan Rice play your game is that the next type of player that goes ahead and likes to dominate the opponent in each way possible. I like to take people's wheels away, uh, playing and play out. So like every play you're going to get something new for me. And I feel as though that you're going to have to be ready for that.

I'm going to have to come prepared because all throughout the week, I'm thinking about different ways that I can incorporate things into my game. That's going to really go ahead and put me in the best pedestal to go ahead and put my best foot forward as well. So something I want to ask you here, Brendan Rice, because my dad was involved in radio back in the day, he produced a very famous talk show, Mike and the mad dog. And like when you get into the same business as your old guy, people go, oh, that's so-and-so son at first. And then you try to leave your own mark and kind of create your own path. So I'm just wondering, let's say in 20 years from now, we're talking, what do you want people to say about Brendan Rice? And what do you want your own mark on the game to really be? I want my own mark on the game to be what the headline, just go ahead and say, yeah, Jerry Rice was great, but Brendan Rice went ahead and paved his own way. And he had to go ahead and put in the natural born work ethic to get to where he's at today. And hopefully in 20 years, you can say that, hey, Jerry Rice and Brendan Rice were just as good or even better.

That would be unbelievable if that was the case. Brendan Rice here with us. You see right now in the game of football and right, we've seen guys, fathers have great careers and then sons try to follow in their footsteps.

But it's pretty neat with what you're doing right now. Over at Stanford, you got EJ Smith, the son of Emmett Smith. And then we know Colorado with Chador and Shiloh Sanders and who their father is coach prime. And then of course at Ohio State, you got Marvin Harrison Jr. And we all know how great his father was. Do you kind of follow those stories? I don't know if you have relationships with those guys just because of, you know, playing college football and who their dads are, but how much of a keen eye do you have on those guys' career? I think it's huge, just like all these guys going ahead and following in their dad's footsteps and just going ahead.

And some of them, like, you know, it doesn't always work out stuff like that. But I feel as though my situation was just a little bit different because I was grown up into something that I wanted to go ahead and put my best foot forward. And I wanted to have to develop my own capabilities because my dad was such a hard worker and such a man of honor. And he feels as though that, hey, you're not going to work for it.

You're not going to get it. So just having that humble and that hard working dad makes you go ahead and transfers onto your child that everything out in this world is not going to be given. You got to go earn it.

You have to go take it. And I know from like my experiences, like my dad was tough on me when I was first trying to get into the business. And then eventually he was like, yeah, you're pretty good at this. Do you remember a moment when your dad said, yeah, son, you got a pretty bright future ahead of you.

You're pretty damn good wide receiver. My dad was very critical. I mean, within my first three years, I would have seen my freshman year of college. He kind of saw some signs, but I feel like this year it's really taken off and he's proud of like what he's seen come into transition and all the hard work is starting to pay off. And I'm really starting to enjoy the fruits of the labor. We're talking to Brendan Rice right now.

We'll talk about Breathe Right in just a second. I know the last two weeks for USC, it hasn't gone your way up against Notre Dame and then a tough loss to Utah. Just how do you kind of look back at what the journey has been like the last two weeks? Day in and day out, you're going to have to put your best foot forward and going to have to strive for greatness.

You're going to have to win the game on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays, even at the Friday walkthrough. And then going into the game, you have to make sure that you go ahead and take what you did on practice each of those days and push it into the game. Because honestly, a lot of stuff that you go through within practice, if you have those mistakes in practice, you're going to have those mistakes in the game. So just going ahead and bouncing back off of that sometimes seems fall down, but people don't remember the fall down.

People remember how you respond and how you get up. So what's the vibe been like with that being set around the team this week after two bad losses for you guys? Just do you sense a different level of hunger from your teammates? Well, just getting back that sense of hunger is what we truly need. And we had that sense of hunger in the beginning of the season.

Now we need to go ahead and reestablish that and push each day in and day out and go at each other and make each other better because on Saturdays it's going to show up. I feel as though that it's really becoming a transition and people are going to be reminded what USC is really all about. We all know who your quarterback is. We've seen him a lot. We know he's going to be the number one overall pick in the draft. He won the Heisman Trophy last year. He's an incredible football player, but you have a different perspective than I do watching from my couch or maybe seeing him in New York when he won the Heisman. You tell me who your quarterback Caleb Williams is.

Caleb Williams is a natural born leader. Each day in and day out, you're going to get the same thing out of him. He's going to go ahead and push on you and harp on you, especially as a wide receiver. We've got to be on point all the time because he's the one throwing us the ball.

So just making sure that you're going ahead and continue to improve your game is going to help build that trust day in and day out. And he's going to be able to depend on you when he goes into that scramble mode, when he goes into those big time situations, when he wants to just go ahead and get it to a specific person. What does your dad, by the way, say about Caleb Williams?

I'm just wondering. My dad says a lot of things, honestly. If anything he says that's most apparent all the time, it would be gifted. Gotcha. I want to read you a tweet.

I'm sure you saw this. It's from Emmanuel Acho, who after you guys lost to Utah said with the national championship hopes gone, Caleb Williams should consider sitting out the rest of the season. The Heisman is a long shot. College football playoffs are even less likely and he won't play in the bowl game.

The risk of playing far outweighs the reward business decision. When you hear that from Emmanuel Acho and he's advocating for your quarterback to sit out for the rest of the season, how do you kind of react to it? I mean, you kind of got to chuckle because that's not who Caleb is. Caleb is going to go ahead and fight with his teammates each and every day. If you think he was really going to sit out, you lost your mind.

I promise you, you lost your mind. This guy is a competitor. He's a guy that's going to go out there and try to show up your defense each day in and day out. And if you think that Heisman is out, guys, I promise you, he still has the best stats in the nation. He can still go on to beat Washington and Oregon. If you guys want to go ahead and say college football playoffs are up, okay, go ahead. Like there's a lot of teams, there's a lot of football left.

We'll see you guys in December. Love that answer. Before we let you run, Brendan Rice, tell me about the campaign that you're doing today on behalf of Breathe Right. I mean, just Breathe Right going ahead and incorporating it into my lifestyle. It's being passed down from generation to generation and it goes back to the lines of legacy. So just as that legacy goes ahead and gets passed down, I'm able to see some of the stuff that my dad used to do with the Air Jerry campaign and how we had to note the nasal strips and just going ahead and being able to recreate that was kind of nostalgic. So just going ahead and incorporating that into my lifestyle and going in and seeing how the nasal can affect my game after those long travel days. It helps me clear my sinuses and allows me to breathe better for those long nights before the game day preparation. I feel like the legacy is really being passed down and I'm thankful for that. Well, I love this conversation. Really do appreciate the time today and good luck on the rest of your journey, Brendan Rice. Thank you.