Lincoln Riley enters the stretch run of the 2026 season with the kind of pressure that comes with one of college football’s biggest jobs, and USC has already shown both sides of that equation.
The Trojans are a blue blood for a reason. They have the resources, the talent base in their own backyard and the kind of national pull that comes with being in the country’s second-most populated city. On the West Coast, there isn’t another program that checks all those boxes.
Riley’s first four seasons have bounced between real highs and hard lows. USC finished 11-1 in 2022, when Caleb Williams won the Heisman Trophy and became the school’s eighth winner. Recruiting has also surged, with the Trojans landing the No. 1 class in 2026 and reasserting themselves as the top recruiting force in Southern California.
But the rough patches have been impossible to ignore. USC went 6-6 in 2024, the defense has remained a problem, and the program still doesn’t have a defining signature win from Riley’s tenure.
This season’s early stumble against Oregon turned up the heat in a major way. After the double-digit loss to the Ducks, USC became the center of the college football conversation for weeks, and Riley’s future was openly questioned. The way things looked at that point, the Trojans were staring at the same kind of collapse that has undone other programs in recent seasons.
Instead, USC steadied itself when it could have unraveled. On Oct. 3, the Trojans trailed Washington 21-10 in the third quarter at the Coliseum, with the “fire Lincoln Riley” chants growing louder.
Then Jayden Maiava hit Zacharyus Williams for 23 yards on 3rd-and-11, and the game changed. USC scored 14 straight points and beat the Huskies for the first time in a decade.
That win opened the door to something even bigger the next week. USC went on the road and topped Penn State 31-23 in front of a record crowd of 114,419.
For a team that has had trouble away from home since moving into the Big Ten in 2024, that result carried real weight. The Trojans didn’t just survive on the road.
They handled it.
Those two games say plenty about the current version of USC under Riley. The outside noise has been loud, but the team didn’t fold after the Washington loss, and that response has pointed to a different kind of culture than the one critics have tried to pin on the program.
The roster is helping too. USC is young, but some of the freshmen are already playing like veterans.
Trent Mosley, Kayden Dixon, Mark Bowman and Luke Wafle are all described as players who no longer feel like freshmen at all. Maiava, meanwhile, is playing the best football of his career.
The defense has also made progress over the past two games, and the Trojans have used their first of two bye weeks to reset mentally and physically.
Now comes the difficult part. USC still has three games left against AP top-10 opponents in Ohio State, Indiana and UCLA.
Before that gauntlet begins, the Trojans head to Madison for another test, facing Wisconsin on Saturday, Oct. 24.
Even with one loss on the record, USC has to treat every week like its own season. Kickoff at Camp Randall is set for 4:30 p.m. PT and will air on NBC.
In Other News...
USC Is Chasing A Local Recruiting Win Lincoln Riley Needs
USC is already making the early rounds in the class of 2028, and one of the names sitting near the top of the board is local defensive back Ca'Ron Williams. The four-star prospect has attracted attention from a national group that includes Oregon, UCLA, Texas and Ohio State, but USC has been persistent enough to get him on campus multiple times, which matters when the Trojans are trying to keep elite Southern California talent at home.
The timing also fits where Lincoln Riley wants this recruiting push to go next. USC has just one commitment in the 2028 class so far, and the staff is expected to turn up the pressure again in the spring of 2027, when these early evaluations start to become more meaningful. For a program built on locking down the region, landing a player like Williams would be a statement, but the Trojans are clearly still in the opening stages of that battle. [Read more 🡒]
USC's Wisconsin Loss Brought Back Familiar Problems Fans Feared
The bye week was supposed to give USC a reset, but the trip to Wisconsin instead brought back the same frustrations that have hovered over this season. Early on, the Trojans defense looked ready to make it a grind, getting after the quarterback with multiple sacks and tackles for loss while keeping the Badgers run game in check through the first half.
USC never found enough on offense to support that effort. Turnovers and an ineffective ground game kept the Trojans from building any rhythm, and once Wisconsin started to tilt the field in the second half, USCs defense had a harder time holding up. The result was a 24-7 loss that felt less like a one-off and more like a reminder of the problems fans had been hoping the bye week would help erase. [Read more 🡒]
USC Suddenly Has A Big Ten Path Fans Need To See
A strange new possibility is starting to take shape for USC and UCLA now that both former Pac-12 rivals are living in the Big Ten. With UCLA having lost starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava, the Bruins path is suddenly less certain, but the broader picture still leaves room for both programs to stay in the hunt if they finish well down the stretch. For USC, that means every remaining conference game carries extra weight, not just for playoff positioning, but for the chance to keep climbing in the league race.
The appeal is obvious for Trojan fans: a season that already feels different could end with a matchup that once belonged to the old Pac-12 stage, only now carrying Big Ten stakes. Both teams have key players and tricky games ahead, and there is still plenty to sort out before any championship scenario becomes real. Even so, the idea of USC and UCLA meeting again with a conference title on the line is the kind of late-season twist that gives the schedule a little more juice. [Read more 🡒]