It's Year 5 of the Lincoln Riley era at USC football
. Five years. That's half a decade. That's a considerable amount of time, a significance piece of life. We have been following Riley at USC since Thanksgiving Sunday of 2021, when he was hired. Here we are in November of 2026, about to mark the five-year anniversary of Riley's arrival in Los Angeles. What does he - and USC - have to show for his tenure?College Football Playoff
Five years, zero College Football Playoff appearances. That's the Lincoln Riley legacy at USC. Let's ask ourselves this question: Would Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma, Texas, and the other blue-blood programs put up with five years without a single playoff appearance? Keep in mind that the playoff went to 12 teams in 2024. Lincoln Riley is 0 for
3 in making the 12-team playoff. The four-team playoff was hard to make, but the 12-team playoff should not be hard to make for USC... if the program is being run properly, of course.
It isn't being run properly.
Conference championships
Lincoln Riley won a ton of Big 12 titles at Oklahoma - four in a row as head coach, six if you include the 2015 and 2016 seasons as offensive coordinator. At USC, he hasn't yet won one conference championship. Even Clay Helton won one of those, in 2017. The track record at USC speaks for itself.
Big Ten road wins at USC under Lincoln Riley
Quick: Name Lincoln Riley's best Big Ten road win at USC. Hmmm. Well, uhhh... wait a second here.
That's the point. You can't come up with a good answer. There's nothing on the plate. There's no meat on the bone. The absence of any true towering achievement in Big Ten road games is all you need to know about Lincoln Riley at USC.
Friday plane flight
The worries about the nationwide ground stop on Friday put a focus on USC's travel schedule. The Trojans flew to Bloomington, Indiana, on Friday. Why Lincoln Riley travels to the more Eastern Big Ten road sites late in the week has always been a mystery. Don't you want your players to spend a couple days in a different city to adjust their body clocks? USC always comes out in these distant road locations sloppy and disorganized. It's a small but important reflection of how Lincoln Riley's approach with this team is all wrong.
Culture of mistakes
"Culture" is a word nearly every coach takes seriously. Lincoln Riley has talked about it plenty of times. Yet, what's your culture as a program if sloppy play is so often the defining aspect of Big Ten road games and, frankly, any game of appreciable importance? At some point, you are who you are. Lincoln Riley is a loser at USC because his culture is defined by bad football when it matters most.
Jayden Maiava
Lincoln Riley has often been able to depend on his quarterbacks when everything else fell apart. This year, his quarterback fell apart, and that goes on Riley as much as it goes on Jayden Maiava. When Lincoln Riley can't even get his quarterback to play well, all is lost for him and his team.
Pete Carroll
USC played a bunch of ugly games under Pete Carroll, but the difference is that USC won the vast majority of those games. When a Lincoln Riley team plays an ugly game, it doesn't win, because Riley needs his offense to be excellent to win. Pete's USC teams could win a 19-9 game in the mud if they had to. They could dominate on defense if the offense wasn't there. Lincoln Riley doesn't have that ability to the extent Pete possessed it.
UCLA and Bob Chesney
Bob Chesney and UCLA are doing in Year 1 of their partnership what Riley and USC haven't been able to do in five years. What does it say about Riley that he couldn't produce even one year in five with elite results? Noticeably, UCLA wins games with its defense when the offense isn't dynamic. It's exactly what is missing at USC.
Lincoln Riley hot seat and USC future
We don't think Jen Cohen will fire Lincoln Riley, but if he loses to UCLA and Chesney, we would certainly fire him. Frankly, we already think he should be fired. It's a case of us at Trojans Wire having a disagreement with the athletic department. What we would do is different from what we think USC will do.
We hope to be proved wrong.
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This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Lincoln Riley, in Year 5, can't solve Big Ten road trips | Opinion
