INDIANAPOLIS — The struggle continues for Lincoln Riley.
OK, we already hear those of you without a $100 million contract and 10 years to earn it coaching college football.
“Give ME that type of struggle!”
Point made. However, it was worth witnessing the USC coach Wednesday. Riley left hurt feelings but also nothing left to prove at Oklahoma. Then, at Big Ten media days, he left a bit of his football self exposed heading as he heads into his third USC season.
You might have noticed the USC “rebuild” — the Trojan coach’s word — hasn’t gone exactly as planned. The celebrated offensive mastermind who reportedly got that $100 million to coach the Trojans three years seemed determined to put his spin on the state of the Trojans.
The coach who has been accused of not being able to play defense aggressively defended his ability to get it done at USC. It was as frank and open as the 40-year-old Riley has been in one of these settings.
“We are playing catch up,” he told reporters. “We’re playing catch up in facilities. We’re playing catch up in NIL. We’re playing catch up in resources within the program. We’ve been playing catch up in damn near every way you can think.”
We’ll see how that lands with AD Jennifer Cohen and USC faithful. Put that way, yes, it seems like a struggle for a program that last won a conference — the late, great Pac-12 — seven years ago. Put another way, for $100 million you expect to be able to drive a new Mercedes off the lot, not order a base model from Carvana.
And the expanded Big Ten is no place to get well.
In two seasons playing with the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft at quarterback (Caleb Williams), the Trojans won 19 games. But more than Riley’s candor was exposed Wednesday. That defense remains an issue, and for the first time in his head coaching career, Riley’s team is not picked nor expected to win the league.
Somewhere between defending his turf on the West Coast and traveling across the country to tread ground in the Big Ten, the Trojans must improve while transitioning.
“There’s a bigger picture to what we’re building here,” he said.
That picture is still being painted. The reserved native of Muleshoe, Texas, who remains an American success story, sounded a lot like that old Buffalo salesman Coach Prime on Wednesday.
“We’re coming,” Riley said. “We’re coming quickly.”
At USC, it can’t come quick enough. The league Riley left behind no longer exists. The league he is entering houses the defending national champion (Michigan), its biggest rival (Ohio State), Penn State and Oregon. It’s a deeper conference than Riley’s old Big 12 or dearly departed Pac-12.
At Oklahoma, he won four Big 12 titles in five seasons, winning 55 games overall. He was hired at USC to do the same. It would be charitable to call it delayed gratification.
“When I got hired at OU everybody thought it was crazy and everybody thought it was going to tank,” Riley said. “You want to go compare football histories? I’ll put up ours [USC] against anybody’s. We’re not just learning to play football.
“Has my patience been tested on it? No doubt. But my resolve hasn’t been tested. My commitment to being here hasn’t been tested. I know this is the right place.”
In 2022, the Trojans got to the Pac-12 championship game before getting beaten for the second time that season by Utah. Group of Five qualifier Tulane then embarrassed the Trojans in the Cotton Bowl.
Last season, a 2-5 finish to a 6-0 start raised all kinds of questions. A perception lingers.
In assessing that season, quarterback Miller Moss was basically asked to prop up a straw man. Why, it was asked by one media member, are West Coast teams perceived as too soft to play in the Big Ten?
“I’m trying to follow my media training here,” Moss said diplomatically.
The opening paragraph of Lindy’s college football annual’s USC preview begins with this sledgehammer:
“Who imagined a year ago that Lincoln Riley could already find himself on the hot seat after he won 11 games in his first season?”
Hot seat? That’s too far, but Riley wasn’t hired to get pushed around by Utah. He certainly didn’t expect to be playing in his third power conference in four years. On Wednesday, Riley was definitely rankled by a recent troll from his former boss, Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione.
Joe C was asked on the SEC Network earlier this month about joining the conference.
“Every coach we talked to was excited,” Castiglione said of his staff. “The ones that weren’t aren’t here anymore.”
Not much left to the imagination there.
“I’m not getting into that,” Riley said curtly Wednesday. “Next question.”
There is a coaching scarlet letter attached to those who are accused of — let’s say — avoiding contact. Earlier this summer, Saturday Down South reported that Riley had tried for two years to get out of the upcoming neutral site opener against LSU.
For the first time Wednesday, Riley (remotely) intimated that the sacred Notre Dame series may not continue.
“I would love to [keep playing Notre Dame],” he said. “I know it means a lot to a lot of people. The purist in you, no doubt. Now if you get in a position where you have to make a decision on what’s best for SC to help us win a national championship vs. keeping that, shoot, then you got to look at it.
“And listen, we’re not the first example of that. Look all the way across the country. There have been a lot of other teams sacrifice rivalry games.”
USC has to compete in the Big Ten before dreaming of a playoff berth. Not to say it can’t happen in Year 3. In his seven seasons as a head coach, Riley’s offenses have finished in the top eight nationally. But Williams is gone.
“[We’re] definitely not behind,” Riley said. “They won four [games] the year before [we got here]. We won 19 the last two. It can never get here fast enough, especially at a blueblood. I’ve got a front-row seat to what life in these is like.”
Riley answered some doubters by his actions in the offseason. Both lines were asked to add weight. The 14 players in the defensive line room put on a cumulative 300 pounds, an average of 21.4 pounds. That is not insignificant entering a league that is known for its brawn.
“I don’t want to say playing in this league it wasn’t a factor [but] the defensive line was more drastic,” Riley said. “It was more, you’re training to turn 285-pound bodies into guys that are now 310.”
That’s a start. So is this: Riley was asked about the biggest improvement by that maligned defense.
“Tackling,” he said.
That’s like saying oxygen is important in the International Space Station. Pro Football Focus calculated the Trojans missed 156 tackles in 2022. That’s an average of 11.1 per game. That’s also a lot. There were 14 missed tackles in the Arizona State game last year per PFF.
A discussion can be had about whether Riley waited too long to fire former defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, but once he did, raiding UCLA for the celebrated D’Anton Lynn was assertive and made sense. The 34-year-old Lynn is a rising star in coaching circles.
“If you take unnecessary risk against him, he’s going to make you pay,” Moss said of Lynn, who is the son of former NFL head coach Anthony Lynn.
In his one season in Westwood, Lynn took UCLA from 87th in total defense to 11th. USC can’t afford its Pac-12 rep in the Big Ten. This is a conference where shootouts come to die. Specifically, we’ll see how Riley’s USC fits in that environment. Michigan’s excellent defensive line doesn’t give a rip about Riley’s three Heisman Trophy winners. In fact, the Wolverines are motivated by it.
There seem to be only two sure wins on the schedule — Sept. 7 at home against Utah State and Oct. 26 at home against an improved Rutgers. Other than that? LSU in Las Vegas looks dangerous. Big Ten games against Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maryland, Nebraska and UCLA could go either way. Or at least that’s the way it seems.
“We’re building to be in the national championship game every single year,” Riley assured the media. “We didn’t take over one that was a national champion and just walk into it. This has been a rebuild from a roster standpoint.”
The Trojans are coming, Riley reiterated. How quickly remains to be seen.
