Lincoln Riley sitting on a scorching hot seat now.
OT: USC loses to Maryland
- Thread starter USN_Panther
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USC kind of pisses me off. That's a team who should be really good every year. Seems like they haven't done anything in 20 years. They are 3-4 in a weak conference. You would think they'd be even better stepping down in class. Amazing that PSU had to go to OT to beat this team.
Nothing to do with it. Couldn't win with Caleb Williams & Jordan Addison. He isnt a good coach.
His USC highlight is that awkward introduction with the band and cheerleaders.
The thing is that they are losing all these games after leading late in each of them. Yesterday, they were up two touchdowns late on Maryland, which hadn’t won a Big Ten game since last November.
Their win over Michigan doesn’t look as strong as it did back in September although their 38-21 win over Wisconsin looks better now. They still have Rutgers and Nebraska at home and UCLA and Washington on the road. Plus Notre Dame. They can get to 6-6 or 7-5 and get into a minor bowl, but for a coach who was promising boosters a national championship and was given the NIL resources to buy what he wanted in the transfer portal, the only thing that will save him is that $88 Million buyout.
Their win over Michigan doesn’t look as strong as it did back in September although their 38-21 win over Wisconsin looks better now. They still have Rutgers and Nebraska at home and UCLA and Washington on the road. Plus Notre Dame. They can get to 6-6 or 7-5 and get into a minor bowl, but for a coach who was promising boosters a national championship and was given the NIL resources to buy what he wanted in the transfer portal, the only thing that will save him is that $88 Million buyout.
They have a ton of injuries that keep piling up.
In general, though, it's tough to believe some of the seasons Texas, USC, Miami, FSU, A&M, and Florida have put together in the past 15 years or so when considering they are the marquee programs in the hotbed recruiting states.
I’m surprised as to how poorly Riley has recruited at USC. I expected him to recruit like Mario has at Miami. Both hired in the same cycle. Two full recruiting classes on their roster.
Riley’s two classes have an average ranking of 12.5.
Mario’s have an average ranking of 5.5.
And Riley has less competition out west, so he should be doing better.
I could give Riley a pass if it seemed like he was building a foundation and let’s see what he does with 3 to 4 stacked classes But he’s not.
Right. That’s how Oklahoma played in 4 CFP games in his 5 years, and why his 5 year record there was 55-10. Because he’s not a good coach. And man Brett Venables has shown anyone can win at Oklahoma, right? OU fans would take Lincoln back in a heartbeat.
Pretty sure he went 11-3 with Addison (who was hurt most of the year) and Williams. I suspect a lot of programs would love to have a guy who isn’t good and can’t win like that.
I don’t know why did so well at OU but has struggled so badly at USC, but I can’t help but think that the fact that he never had to deal with NIL and the portal at OU has a lot to do with it. That roster he has at USC has been basically a revolving door of one year guys.
Theres something systemically wrong with USC. I think they suffered the same thing that happened to Miami. City school with not a big following. The southern teams began pouring a ton of money into football and winning. And they thought geographic relation to talent would be enough. Then the local talent base sees poor facilities, a lack of under the table payments, and empty stadiums, and they would rather leave and go be gods for teams who school and local fans treat them like gods.
Then you make horrible hires, both administratively and head coaching wise, because you simply don’t care about football and winning.
There’s two ways to look at the Riley hire:
1. It’s indicative of a structural change that happened at the program, so Riley’s failures are his.
2. It was just a bandaid, quick fix. The school hired him in hopes that they wouldn’t need to change the structural problems. And so the failures aren’t entirely on Riley.
But if that was true, why would Riley even take the job?
A lot of truth to that. I mean the only real significant success USC has had in modern memory was when Pete Carroll was there cheating his ass off-much like what was going on at The U back in its glory days.
Imagine if Alabama announced tomorrow that they were pulling Greg McElory from the ESPN booth, or LSU pulling Booger from the ESPN halftime studio, to be their ADs. You can’t, because it would never happen. Those schools are too serious about football.
But that’s what USC did.
And that’s before the south and Ohio State just went insane with football. Back when an undefeated SEC team could be left out of the national title game and it wasn’t seen as a national emergency, because the SEC hadn’t yet become the “SEC.”
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