We’re going about this USC question the wrong way, transfixed by the low-hanging catnip of tens of millions of dollars in buyout money.
This isn’t about the $70 million it’s going to take to buy out embattled Trojans coach Lincoln Riley.
It’s about UCLA.
It’s about the once broken and battered weakling, long forgotten amid all things Cardinal and Gold, strutting onto Muscle Beach in Venice. All swole and ready to fight.
USC can deal with a program in disarray. It can deal with a culture problem and the failure of a once can’t-miss hire and more excuses than big game wins over the past five torturous
seasons.
It can’t deal with what Bob Chesney is building at UCLA. It can’t continue to fail spectacularly in games that matter, and watch the Bruins rise from decades of futility in one season under a guy who doesn’t put up with crap from anyone.
Or the diametric opposite of Riley.
“I don’t want to be in a situation where we are limiting ourselves, or we make excuses,” Chesney said last weekend after UCLA’s dismantling of Maryland.
And it may as well have been a direct shot at Riley and USC, the crosstown rival with every possible advantage to win big — and a now undeniable track record of underachieving.
Want to truly understand the depth of the Riley decision at USC, and how it’s more than just the $70 million and as much or more about UCLA and Chesney? Two years ago, the Trojans flew across the country and played at Maryland — a Terps team coach Mike Locksley later admitted was in disarray after he lost the locker room.
It was Maryland’s only win from late September to the end of the season, a span of eight games.
Last weekend, UCLA made the long cross-country flight, rolled into College Park and hung 54 points on the Terps. And gave up a measly field goal.
In Chesney’s first season. With 62 new players. With a godawful recent history at UCLA of who cares and why bother.
Jim Mora Jr. tried to turn things around in Westwood, so did Chip Kelly. So did beloved alums Rick Neuheisel, Karl Dorrell and DeShaun Foster.
Nothing worked or stuck because while USC is flush with cash and support, UCLA is in the red and the Rose Bowl is routinely empty because the product is routinely bad. And for the love of all things 8-Clap, they’re still making that $10 million Calimony payment to sister school Cal after bolting for the Big Ten.
So they hired Chesney, a grinder of a coach who made Holy Cross, of all places, a fixture in the FCS playoffs. Who followed Curt Cignetti at James Madison, and rebuilt JMU after Cignetti took his best players with him to Indiana.
Then did what Cignetti couldn’t do: get JMU to the College Football Playoff.
Now here we are, and the same road Cignetti took to completely changing the losingest program in college football history at Indiana, is beginning to play out at UCLA — the program that hasn’t been relevant since the late 1990s.
Chesney took a majority of his staff from JMU (like Cignetti did at Indiana), and took 11 players (Cignetti took 13). He took the no excuse culture Cignetti built at JMU — one he fed and grew — and brought it to Westwood.
The overlooked and the under-recruited, given a chance at the big time — and squeezing the very life from it.
Wayne Knight rushed for nearly 1,400 yards last year at JMU. He has 445 in four games at UCLA, and nine touchdowns.
Riley Robell and Carter Sweazie were stalwarts on the JMU offensive line, and have brought toughness and attitude to a program that had none. The JMU transfers have helped Chesney sell his plan for a quicker buy-in — just like the transfers did for Cignetti.
The schedule is favorable, the offense has an experienced quarterback and a strong run game, and the defensive line is wildly underrated. All distinctive traits of the Indiana model in 2024.
It doesn’t mean UCLA is headed to the CFP, but it does mean something as important much closer to home. USC is about to get sideswiped by UCLA if it stays too long with a coach trying to field a Big 12 team in the Big Ten.
It does mean, at some point, fans will fill the Rose Bowl again, and booster money of decades past will begin to flow again. And one more thing: the $10 million Calimony payment ends after the 2026-27 school year.
"The main thing is (Chesney) brought in guys that had character and wanted to be here," said UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava. "Wanted to be with us, and wanted to win football games."
Go ahead, USC, and bet on the No.1 recruiting class signed by Riley in February while ignoring the actual track record on the field. Believe that a group of high school players — who may or may not be with the program when the transfer portal opens after the season — will be the difference in what you’ve seen and what Riley is selling.
Talk yourself into saving tens of millions, and double down on inexplicable losses and the culture of "a couple of plays away" from greatness.
Meanwhile, UCLA will zooming by in the passing lane, getting bigger and stronger every week.
All muscle-bound and ready to fight.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: UCLA football is real threat to USC, not Lincoln Riley's $70 million buyout
