Alaska native Erwin Taomi fulfills a dream with USC football scholarship

Taomi, who came to St. Joseph High in Santa Maria during his junior year of high school, signed with USC 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.

Taomi wanted to play football. His favorite player, growing up, was Troy Polumalu. So he told Crisp he wanted to play football at USC.

He sat on Crisp’s couch in Santa Maria, California that day, three years ago, with little to his name. Taomi was 3,300 miles from his home in Alaska, his family seeing there could be more to life for him than a life in Anchorage, where you can count on one hand the number of legitimate Division I products in the last few years. His grades were sagging. He stood 6-foot-5 and weighed 430 pounds. He didn’t say much. And before the St. Joseph High community got to know Taomi, as football coach Pepe Villasenor can attest, he’d walk into class and a few of his teachers — seeing his frame, hearing his silence — would feel ever-so-slightly intimidated.

But he’d come at the suggestion of his uncle, who lived in Santa Maria and knew about St. Joseph. Taomi had a vision. And Crisp, whose oldest son Mark was then a quarterback at St. Joseph, had an open bedroom.

“Him wanting to just pursue that dream and leave everything back, I mean, it was just kinda shocking,” Crisp recalled. “So when you see somebody like that — for you to open up your home is not really hard, you know what I mean?”

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.

On Wednesday morning, he sat proud in St. Joseph’s library Wednesday and inked a full-ride scholarship to play football for USC.

His arrival may have been teased ever-so-slightly by Lincoln Riley at Big Ten Media Day in Indianapolis, where the USC coach told reporters his program wasn’t “completely done yet” in a discussion of the spring transfer portal. It was a confusing admission given the timeframe, the start of fall camp all of a week away.

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.

After being tabbed by Henson, Taomi waited weeks upon weeks — his transcripts from back in Alaska, St. Joseph and Hancock all needing to be cleared — to sign. It was the only Division I offer he got. Other programs, Villasenor felt, had backed off once realizing Henson’s pursuit of him.

“I think it was a shock to (Henson) of, ‘Man, who is this guy, and where in the world did he come from?’” Villasenor recalled.

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.”

“I want us to be a developmental program, and certainly the lines of scrimmage and not going very portal-heavy at all, really, on either one, I think showed that we’re doubling down on that notion,” Riley said.

Riley had also admitted after USC’s first spring practice in March, however, that the program’s depth at tackle was “a little bit of a concern.” Taomi, who stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 335 pounds, fills an immediate need while also offering developmental upside, a 19-year-old who’s played one season of junior college.

“I definitely think he was brought in to help the O-line room,” Villasenor said. “Apparently, they were short on some numbers, but I think Coach Henson felt like this young man – with some development and some experience – can definitely develop into a potential starter in the future.”

After one practice in the beginning of his senior year, Villasenor drove Taomi home. He started lighting the kid up. He’d been goofing off at practice. He’d gotten in trouble for not wearing proper attire. So Villasenor gave him some tough love, unsure how he’d respond.

The next day, when Villasenor drove him again, Taomi’s eyes started welling up.

“Coach,” Villasenor recalled Taomi telling him, “I’ll never disappoint you again.”

By the end of his time at St. Joseph, Taomi’s GPA had risen about a full point. He’d become like a son to Crisp, and anyone at St. Joseph would do anything for him, Villasenor said. And the kid from Alaska will get the shot he’s always longed for.

“I feel like I’m actually within a movie script, you know what I mean?” Villasenor said.