playPaolo UggettiSep 24, 2026, 07:00 AM ETMultiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsWalking through the hallways of the Chicago Hilton during Big Ten media days in late July, Lincoln Riley was taking questions in stride. They came all day long from every corner, every room. In some ways, the questions were different than the ones from his Oklahoma days; in other ways, they were the same. But it was Riley who said he had changed.”Somebody asked me, ‘Are you a better head coach now than you were before?'” Riley said.
“By a mile. There’s things that I’ve learned and know now that I wish I’d known then and would’ve helped us a lot.”The 42-year-old is now in his fifth year as USC’s head coach, a fifth year of feeling the pressure from having never made a College Football Playoff appearance with the Trojans. The proverbial clock feels like it is ticking a bit faster now, the temperature of his seat getting a bit warmer. So, the questions came in flurries, perhaps more pointed than ever.
At this moment, however, Riley was running on optimism, and he was not just introspective — he appeared more relaxed than ever, and his responses had the bite to match.”Frankly, I think that’s why [USC] needed somebody like me,” Riley told ESPN. “This wasn’t going to turn around without some bumps along the way, especially just how scrutinized and the expectations are at a place like this.”It has been three full seasons now since the Trojans rode Caleb Williams’ hot hand to an 11-3 campaign in 2022 that appeared to vindicate Riley’s decision to leave Oklahoma in 2021 and shed light on what kind of program USC could become under him. Since then, the Trojans have gone 28-15 (Riley’s 35-18 overall record at USC entering the 2026 season was the same as his predecessor, Clay Helton, had over his first 53 games), undergone various assistant coaching changes, an athletic director change and faced plenty of critiques about their shortcomings.”No matter what the roster is, no matter what you inherit, no matter what the facilities are, no matter how aligned it is, the world doesn’t give a s—, and that’s OK. That’s fine.
I knew that,” Riley said. “I’m not asking for anybody’s sympathy. But I think that’s why they needed or maybe wanted somebody that had been through it and done it at a big place and they could stay steady. I just think it’s what we needed and I think that’s why we’re headed the way we’re headed.”In the past, Riley stated how much work he and his staff had to do to get USC up to snuff to match the sport’s other elite programs.
At times, it has seemed like an excuse to couch expectations for the Trojans. Two years ago at Big Ten media days, Riley famously said he wasn’t a “magician,” and he couldn’t just “wave a magic wand and everything just be perfect right away.”In the lead up to the 2026 season, Riley touted everything the Trojans do have instead of what they don’t. They boast a deep and balanced roster that has been built more on development than acquisitions, the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in the nation, and a state-of-the-art facility that Riley has worked toward from the moment he arrived in Los Angeles — USC has left no room for excuses. They know it too.
Spend any time driving around Los Angeles this summer and you would likely run into one of several USC promotional billboards with a message that did not leave much room for interpretation.”The Time is: Now.”Four games into a pivotal season, USC has four wins. At times the Trojans have looked dominant, while other times concerning shades of inconsistency have resurfaced. Yet as No. 20 Oregon arrives at the Coliseum on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, NBC), the pressure surrounding Riley’s program and the demand for a signature victory has reached a boiling point.”It’s what it’s supposed to feel like here,” Riley said.
“Expectations and all that are always there and I’ve never shied away from those.”OKLAHOMA IS NOW a distant fleck in Riley’s rearview mirror. After this season, he will have been head coach of the Trojans for just as long as he coached the Sooners. because that was Riley’s first head coaching gig, being at the center of a high-profile program is, as he put it, all he has ever known and all he can refer back to in times like these.”I was heavily doubted when [hired] at OU and there’s times there where we win a bunch of games and people say, ‘Oh, you’re this or that of a coach.’ And things get blown out of proportion,” Riley said. “I live in a world that’s constantly blown out of proportion. So it’s my job to stay steady.”Oklahoma and USC are both blue bloods of the sport, but the past few seasons have revealed that if Riley’s role with the Sooners was to sustain greatness following the end of Bob Stoops’ tenure, the task in Los Angeles has been to rebuild greatness.That process of constructing strength and depth on the roster has been a slow burn, as was the journey to build and secure the top-ranked recruiting class in the country and modernize the program’s NIL efforts and front office.
The length of that process — and by extension, the lack of results — stems from a misguided decision (as Riley is not afraid to admit) after his first year to go all-in on acquiring ready-made talent through the transfer portal to bolster Williams’ final season at USC. The strategy did not pan out.”It’s the biggest mistake I’ve made,” Riley told ESPN before the 2025 season. “I know why I did it, I know why we did it … but one of the reasons I was most excited to come to USC was to recruit high school and to develop and take advantage of where we were. We got to that a year late.”That identity shift has fully crystallized now.
The Trojans’ first two-deep roster ahead of the season opener featured five freshmen potentially in starting roles. And while Riley & Co. frequented the portal early on at USC, the team added just 10 transfers (6,608 Div. I snaps) for the 2026 season, which ranks last in the Big Ten and 63rd among Power 4 schools, according to research by ESPN’s Max Olson.That’s not to say that the Trojans lack experience. Despite losing key players such as wide receiver Makai Lemon and safety Jamari Ramsey to the NFL, they lead the entire FBS with 15 returning starters, including nine on offense led by starting quarterback Jayden Maiava, who is in his third season in Riley’s system and has the makings of a Heisman Trophy contender.”The confidence really comes from Coach Riley,” Maiava said of the expectations surrounding the team.
“I think we’re just ready.”Through four games, the freshmen have delivered. Wide receiver Trent Mosley (255 yards, four touchdowns) already looks like the No. 1 target for the offense, comfortably filling the role left by Lemon. And while Mosley might miss the Oregon game with an injury, fellow freshman Kayden Dixon-Wyatt has already become an impactful receiver as well (258 yards, two touchdowns). Then there’s Mark Bowman — the highly touted five-star tight end who looks to be as good a pass-catcher (160 yards, two touchdowns) as he is a blocker already.On defense, all eyes have gravitated toward defensive end Luke Wafle.
The 6-foot-6, 265-pound lineman has already wreaked havoc on opposing offenses.”He’s really the total package,” Riley said.It’s safe to say USC’s defense has longed for a player like Wafle in their quest to keep up with Riley’s typically potent offenses. If there is a wrinkle this crucial season, a big one at that, it is whom Riley has tasked with handling USC’s historically cantankerous defense following the departure of defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn to Penn State. Instead of promoting from within for continuity or finding an up-and-coming coordinator elsewhere, Riley turned to a familiar foe: former TCU head coach Gary Patterson.”I’ve never coached against somebody that I thought was more unique and tougher to go against than Gary,” said Riley, who went 6-0 against Patterson in the Big 12 while at OU. “A lot of the OU versus TCU years that we competed a
