Joel Klatt isn’t entertaining the idea that USC would move on from Lincoln Riley after a rough run against top-tier opponents.
That was the clear message when the FOX college football analyst joined Colin Cowherd on a recent edition of "The Herd" and was asked whether losses to Oregon, Ohio State and Indiana would be enough to push USC into firing Riley. Klatt pointed instead to the financial and roster fallout that would come with such a move.
"He would not be fired, nor should he," Klatt said. "Remember, they have the No. 1 recruiting class in the country, and they just built that brand new football building.
This is not just about the money you would have to pay him, which is substantial. You would have to buy out the rest of staff, buy out the next coach.
You just spent over nine figures building a beautiful football building, then you have to spend probably close to $40 million on a new roster."
The conversation comes at a time when USC’s 2026 outlook is a strange mix of promise and pressure. No Power Four program brings back more starters from its 2025 team than the Trojans, and after a nine-win regular season, that kind of continuity should give them a real boost in the chase for the College Football Playoff.
But the schedule is the kind that can turn optimism into a problem fast. One of college football’s toughest conference slates leaves USC with almost no room for error, where the line between playoff contention and merely scraping into bowl eligibility could be razor thin.
Riley’s tenure has already produced plenty of questions. His best season at USC came in year one, and since then the results have cooled off sharply.
The Trojans faded badly in the second half of 2023 during Caleb Williams’ final year, then barely got to a bowl game in 2024 before losing all but one matchup against ranked opponents in 2025. That run of struggles against the best teams on the schedule has fueled the speculation about whether his seat is getting warm.
Klatt’s argument is that USC would be facing far more than just a football decision if it ever pulled the trigger. In the transfer portal and NIL era, roster turnover can hit hard after a coaching change, and coach loyalty still matters enough that programs have to weigh the ripple effects carefully.
He pointed to Auburn’s 2026 offseason as the kind of cautionary example. The Tigers knew firing Hugh Freeze would likely send much of their 2025 roster out the door, but repeated failures in close games eventually forced them to reset.
USC, Klatt suggested, is not there yet. The Trojans have not been through the same kind of repeated heartbreak Auburn endured in 2024 and 2025, and firing Riley would not just mean losing pieces from the current roster. It could also create problems with the early signing period, where USC currently holds the No. 13 recruiting class in the 2027 cycle and several of those top commitments could back away if a coaching change happened.
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