USC football is not in bad shape as it enters the home stretch of the 2026 season, but the Trojans aren't in good shape, either. USC is caught in between, which in many ways is a worst-case scenario unto itself. It's a strange world when having only two losses going into the middle of November is actually a nightmare, but life and college football are both very strange these days, in case you haven't noticed. Lincoln Riley and USC are putting Trojan fans through a Price Is Right game in which the ultimate outcome might be the one thing fans hoped to avoid going into 2027. We will explain all of this below:
USC football and pigskin Plinko
USC football is caught in a game of pigskin Plinko. If you watch The Price Is Right, you know the Plinko game, in which chips are placed at the top
of a board with small spikes. The chip slides down the board and bangs into the various spikes before landing in a slot at the bottom of the board. One good bounce and the chip lands on $10,000 in the middle. One bad bounce and the chip falls into the two zero-dollar slots on the sides of the $10,000 middle slot. The comparison to USC football is not hard to visualize.
Plinko outcome No. 1 for USC
The $10,000 slot is obvious: USC beats Curt Cignetti and Indiana, then (after beating Maryland, a layup) beats Bob Chesney and UCLA to go 10-2 and make the College Football Playoff. This is the dream scenario, the outcome we all want. This would change everything for USC fans, for us, and for Lincoln Riley and the program. No more hot seat. No more doubts. No more questions. The Trojans would be Lincoln Riley's program going into 2027 and then into 2028. Chad Bowden would help Riley stack more recruiting classes. Making the playoff would give USC a real chance to become a destination program again. The Trojan Empire could really be restored. This is what we all hope for.
Outcome No. 2 for USC football
Of course, USC could completely unravel. Cignetti and Chesney could both beat Lincoln Riley and USC could fall to 8-4. This outcome would create so much noise and dissatisfaction that Riley might still be fired at the end of the season. We wouldn't count on it happening, but it would remain a real possibility. If USC fans can't get outcome No. 1 - the playoff and a true restoration of the program - they could at least get outcome No. 2, in which Riley gets dismissed and the program can start fresh with a new operation under a new leader. That's not a worst-case scenario. This would be akin to getting $500 in Plinko. It's not $10,000, but it's not zero, either.
Outcome No. 3 - the worst-case scenario for USC
This is the Plinko outcome in which the chip slides away from that $10,000 middle slot to one of the two zero-dollar slots at the bottom of the board. USC loses to Indiana but beats UCLA (remember, the Bruins have a backup quarterback and haven't faced the best teams in the Big Ten this year) and finishes 9-3. USC brass won't eat a $70 million buyout under these circumstances, so the administration and Jennifer Cohen keep Riley for 2027, but the Trojans still miss the CFP and ultimately endure another failed season. Riley goes 0 for 5 in his pursuit of the playoff at USC, but he gets retained. This is the worst of both worlds.
USC fans either want a playoff appearance or they want Riley fired. The 9-3 scenario is the in-between scenario in which neither happens. It is, as we said above, a case of the in-between scenario actually feeling like the worst-case scenario. We can all see it coming, because that's how life has been for USC football the past 16 years except for the 2016 and 2017 seasons rescued by Sam Darnold.
The Ohio State win needs to really, really count
We're not upset USC beat Ohio State. The Trojans played a good game against a brand-name opponent. We would like to see more of that. Lincoln Riley had his team ready to play for once. Good! We like seeing that. However, there has to be a follow-up to this. It can't be a one-time moment. USC needs to stack wins on top of this and get to 10-2. Then this OSU win will count a lot more and become an all-time memory for Trojan fans. The win wasn't bad, but it can't end here. That's the point.
Indiana game feels like make-or-break for Lincoln Riley
Riley might get retained for 2027 at USC regardless of what he does at Indiana on November 14, but that matchup on the road against Curt Cignetti feels like a final and defining moment for Riley as the Trojans' head coach. USC has been so consistently bad in significant Big Ten road games under Riley (plus road games at Notre Dame) that if he gets blown out by an IU team which is clearly not as good as last season's national championship team, it will tell us that Riley simply can't fix this ongoing problem. It would leave USC with no basis for confidence that 2027 can solve what 2026 failed to address. USC has shown it can play great games at home against big-name opponents: Michigan last year, Ohio State this year. Doing it on the road is what Lincoln Riley simply has to prove, and if he can't do it against an Indiana team which has received below-average quarterback play this season, it will tell us that Riley is not the right man to lead this program into the future. It's Year 5, as we keep pointing out. If you can't win one really, really big road game in five seasons at USC, why should you get a sixth season?
Bob Chesney and UCLA
It's true that UCLA's Big Ten schedule is soft. The Bruins don't play Ohio State or Indiana. They're lucky... but guess what? USC didn't play Ohio State or Indiana last year and lost to Illinois, costing itself a playoff spot. UCLA is doing what USC should have done last year, but failed to do. If Bob Chesney makes the playoff in Year 1 at UCLA, the soft Big Ten schedule won't matter. The story would rightly be that Bob Chesney won all the games he was supposed to win, plus the Oregon game. Lincoln Riley is 0-3 against Dan Lanning and Oregon. Chesney figured out Lanning in his first UCLA meeting against the Ducks. Bob Chesney is about to make Lincoln Riley look very bad if USC can't run the table and finish 10-2. If Chesney, with a backup QB, beats USC, it will be a thunderous statement about which coach is better in Los Angeles.
Change versus stagnation
This whole discussion about USC football and Lincoln Riley is basically a discussion about change versus the status quo. USC finishing 9-3 - good enough to keep Riley for another year, not good enough to have a successful season and the playoff berth to show for it - is exactly what we all went through in 2025. The prospect of going through this exact same journey one year later would feel for many like a giant waste of time. We waited eight months after the Alamo Bowl loss to TCU, hoping for something clearly better from USC in 2026. So far, we haven't gotten it on a regular basis. We got it against Ohio State, but not Wisconsin. We got it against Fresno State, but not Washington. We got it against Penn State, but not Oregon. It's not elite football. It isn't horrible football. It's in-between ... and the theme of this whole article is that being in between actually feels worse than being really good (playoff) or really bad (Riley gets fired and the program can turn the page).
Final point: The Big Ten has not been good this year
Indiana almost lost to Minnesota at home. Ohio State has two losses at the start of November. Oregon has been brutally mediocre this year. Iowa has stumbled. Michigan has been hard to watch. Penn State has flopped. Teams we expect to be really good have not played up to their expected standard. UCLA is the one true overachiever in the Big Ten, but as we have said, the Bruins have received a very favorable schedule. If Lincoln Riley and USC can't make the playoff in a year when the Big Ten is way down, what happens when the conference is back to being strong the way it was in 2025? It's one key point to consider when wondering if USC should fire Lincoln Riley if he falls short of the playoff this year.
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This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: USC is losing a Price Is Right game with Lincoln Riley | Opinion
