USC enters 2026 with a familiar mix of hope and pressure, and Paul Finebaum isn’t ignoring either side of the equation. The Trojans have enough talent to make people believe again, but their path is lined with the kind of games that can wreck a season in a hurry.
Finebaum said on The Paul Finebaum Show that the buzz around Lincoln Riley is real, but the schedule is the part that keeps dragging the conversation back to earth.
"There is a lot of optimism coming out of So. Cal about Lincoln Riley," Finebaum said on 'The Paul Finebaum Show.'
"Everybody feels great about the quarterback and feels maybe this is the year they turn it around. That is, until you talk about their schedule.
The Big Ten is much tougher than it has been."
That caution makes sense when you look at where USC has been. The Trojans were once one of the sport’s premier programs, especially during Pete Carroll’s dominant run in the 2000s.
Since 2010, though, they’ve only managed five double-digit-win seasons. The most recent came in 2022, when Riley’s first USC team went 11-3 and briefly looked ready to put the program back on top.
What followed has made the optimism harder to sustain. USC went 8-5 the next year despite opening the season ranked No. 6 and bringing back Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams. After that came a 7-6 season, and plenty of questions about whether Riley was the right fit for the job.
The Trojans did show improvement in 2025, finishing 9-4, but they still missed the College Football Playoff. That leaves Riley heading into 2026 with pressure building fast and little margin for another uneven year.
The schedule isn’t doing him any favors. USC has to deal with Oregon, Penn State, Washington, Ohio State and Indiana this season, a brutal run that could define everything. If the Trojans don’t come out of that stretch with a winning record, the year could slip away quickly.
That’s the reality around a program that didn’t bring Riley in just to rack up solid seasons. USC expects more than that. It expects to be in the championship conversation.
Riley has delivered moments that suggest the rebuild can still work, but the sustained success USC envisioned when he arrived from Oklahoma has never fully taken shape. Entering his fifth season, the patience is thinning.
There’s no shortage of belief around the roster, and the quarterback situation has only added to the confidence. But in the Big Ten, that kind of optimism has to survive the schedule first. Riley has to show his team can win the biggest games consistently, or USC could be back in the market for someone else to restore its championship standard.
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Major Stokes is only getting started in the 2028 recruiting cycle, but the four-star defensive end already has national programs paying close attention. USC is on the list of schools he plans to visit on game days, along with Ohio State, as he sorts through an early process that still has plenty of time to play out. For the Trojans, the appeal is clear: defensive end coach Shaun Nua has emerged as a significant part of why Stokes is looking seriously at the program.
Michigan is also very much in the mix, thanks to Stokes relationship with defensive line coach Lewis Powell, and the recruiting picture figures to stay fluid as he works through his junior year before making any commitment. For USC, that means the next stretch matters just as much as the visits themselves, because landing an elite pass rusher this early often comes down to keeping the right relationships warm while the rest of the field keeps pressing. [Read more 🡒]
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Among them, the Notre Dame series still has a weight all its own, the kind of rivalry that refuses to lose its edge no matter how college football changes around it. USCs history with UCLA remains a defining West Coast measuring stick, especially through the Pete Carroll era, while Oregon has become a more current on-field annoyance. And then there is the NCAA, a rival in a very different sense, one that left its own mark on the program and still lingers in the background of how USC is remembered. [Read more 🡒]
USC Suddenly Has A Troubling O Line Problem To Solve
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The timing makes the situation even more uncomfortable because the Trojans are heading toward a schedule that will demand answers quickly against strong defensive fronts. USC will have to sort through replacement options and settle the interior line before the pressure starts to rise, and the first real test of how ready that group is comes later in the month against Oregon. [Read more 🡒]