Lincoln Riley is heading into a pressure-packed fifth season at USC, and Josh Pate thinks the situation has reached the point where the Trojans are firmly in win-now territory.
Pate laid it out on "Josh Pate's College Football Show," saying the program’s patience is not unlimited after a run that has fallen short of the standard USC expected when it made the splash hire.
"USC is certainly on the clock," Pate said. "This is no mystery.
When USC hired Lincoln Riley, it was a bombshell. Because when USC hired Lincoln Riley, USC was searching, and Lincoln Riley was the answer, or so it seemed...
They are entering Year 5. His best year was his first year; that was his one and only time he won double-digit games."
That first season looked like the start of something big. Riley arrived before the 2022 season to revive a USC program that had been stuck in the mud for years. The Trojans had been one of the sport’s strongest teams in the 2000s, with seven double-digit-win seasons and two national championships, but from 2010-21 they managed only four double-digit-win seasons and no College Football Playoff appearances.
Riley came with a reputation that suggested he could change all of that. In five seasons at Oklahoma, he went 55-10, won three College Football Playoff berths and four Big 12 championships, and built offenses that were among the most explosive in the country. During that stretch, two of his players won the Heisman Trophy and another finished as a runner-up.
USC got the jolt it wanted right away. Riley’s first team went 11-3, and Caleb Williams won the Heisman Trophy.
But that has been the high point. Since then, the results have slid: an 8-5 season in 2023 despite Williams returning and USC opening the year ranked No. 6, followed by records of 7-6 and 9-4 over the next two seasons.
The bigger issue is that the Trojans still have not taken the step USC hired Riley to deliver. He has put the team in the final College Football Playoff rankings only twice, and never higher than No.
- At Oklahoma, by comparison, he finished in the top six every year except his last.
That gap between expectation and production is why the pressure is only increasing. USC did not bring in Riley to be merely respectable. The standard was always national championship contention, and if the Trojans keep landing in the nine- or 10-win range without making a real postseason breakthrough, the questions around Riley’s future in Los Angeles are only going to get louder.
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