Hollywood Husker: Nebraska football lands USC transfer cornerback Ceyair Wright

USC transfer Ceyair Wright will get to face his former team in mid-November.

Wright, a 6-foot-2, 190-pounder from Los Angeles — on Instagram, the working actor lists his home at Hollywood — left the Trojans in late April. He’s generally been quiet about his plans since then, but he visited Nebraska the weekend of June 21, just before a long recruiting dead period.

Now, he’s a Husker. He told ESPN that he was impressed by “how much all the coaches poured into me.” Wright did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the World-Herald.

 He started 11 games in 2022, and over 30 games in his career at USC, he had 40 tackles and one interception. A Top 100 recruit in the 2021 class, Wright played football at Loyola High School before heading to USC to play for defensive backs coach Donte Williams, the former Nebraska assistant who also served, briefly, as the Trojans’ interim head coach.

Williams left USC this winter to take the Georgia defensive backs job vacated by Fran Brown, a longtime Matt Rhule aide who took the Syracuse head coaching job.

While Wright have had a chance to play for UGA, the path to playing time appears clearer at Nebraska, which planned to start FCS transfer Blye Hill at corner until he injured his knee in the spring game.

NU lost starting corner Quinton Newsome to graduation in the offseason, and defensive backs coach Evan Cooper preferred to move 5-foot-9, 175-pound Malcolm Hartzog — a starting corner in 2022 and part of 2023 — and sign Hill than keep Hartzog at corner.

Wright will compete against a host of young corners like Jeremiah Charles, Mario Buford, Dwight Bootle and D’Andre Barnes — and perhaps Hartzog, too — to see who starts opposite Tommi Hill, who replaced Hartzog as the starting corner midway through the 2023 season and finished with a team-high four interceptions.

In a June 20 press conference with reporters, NU coach Matt Rhule said he was open to adding another cornerback to a roster that already has roughly 30 defensive backs.

“Our job, instead of taking the easy way out and always looking outside, it’s to look inside first,” Rhule said. “But, again, if there’s a corner sitting out there who wants to come in and compete for the job, I’d take him right now, because that’ll help those young guys to be better players.”

Wright, a fourth-year junior, has his own Internet Movie Database page, which lists seven credits, including “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” where he plays one of LeBron James’ sons, and “Grown-ish,” where he has a recurring role as Zeke Bracey.