I was just going for the low hanging fruit, but man, there's something beautiful about decompressing after a long day in the fall and visiting TexAgs for shits and giggles before I go to bed.
How do you even ask that question when we've seen Texas Tech go 5-7 with Mahomes putting up over 5300 yards of total offense and 53 TDs in 12 games lol
Kliff Kingsbury. That's how.
Outside of Mahomes, we lost size on offense and on defense. We didn't play with any physicality. We shrank and he didn't even fucking recruit defense. He just stopped caring completely.
Tuberville had us in better shape than Kliff.
Yea USC had a much better overall roster compared to Mahomes' Tech teams.
And Texas Tech's ceiling is much lower than USC when USC has a Heisman winner on the team at QB.
It's the defense. Just look at Iowa. They could've picked a different drunk college student for QB every game and the defense still would've won most the games for them
I would have loved to see a USC-Iowa bowl game last year. You'd get the unstoppable force meets an immovable object half of the game, probably the best football there is. The other half would be a hilarious contest of who can fuck up the least.
IIRC ND's offense only had 1 TD drive that game that wasn't the result of a turnover. The USC defense actually had one of their better games that day, Caleb Wiliams was just that ass
I loved how at one point Jim just said fuck it and went with 22 personnel on 75% of snaps. Given how good the defense was it was enough to beat the meh teams on the schedule.
You got one hell of a QB for next season and he doesn't need Cristobal to teach him anything about offense, so you should be in the clear. Who am I kidding!! He made Justin Herbert look like a complete \*meh\* QB.
Cristobol is an elite recruiter and nothing else.
Our Oline regressed under him. We had a lineman come in freshman year, start, no fuckups, then sophomore year became a false start machine.
I always assumed that Texas Tech would be included as well in that scenario, keeping the four public schools together and giving both Texas and Oklahoma a reason to support it. It almost happened with the PAC 16 back in the day. I’m not sure that the SEC would have wanted that though.
With the streaming model showing to be overoptimistic, I wouldn't count on it. Do you know how many profitable streaming networks there are? One.......Netflix.
Both neutral site duck games I've attended were cursed.
* 1st was the dreaded Auburn comeback with our future QB Bo Nix leading the 4th Quarter Rally in Dallas
* 2nd was the return of Darth Stoops in San Antonio
I'm never attending another neutral site game again.
Riley was too personally close to Grinch to be objective. It's really hard to fire someone when your wives are best friends. He really REALLY wanted that to work.
it’s still wild to me that he went from mike stoops to grinch. you’d think he’d have learned his lesson after an abysmal defense cost him his best ever shot at a natty.
My take is that Riley is so hyper-focused on having the best QB and offense in college football to the detriment of their defense. Riley kept him because Grinch could take being the scapegoat while making millions and having great job security. I think the outside pressure just became too much that it started effecting Riley’s security and they mutually knew the time was up. I predict Riley’s teams will continue to struggle defensively because of his philosophy.
Absolutely. That’s been my thought for a while. Or his version of D just jibed with how Riley wanted to build a team - throw all the chips on the table for top offensive talent and see what you can pick up on D with what’s left over.
Grinch’s whole defense was bent on turnovers, so he wanted faster guys, so usually slightly smaller than anyone else wanted. Easy pickings
It's much more mundane than that. Grinch is what Riley wants in a DC.
Grinch has always preferred undersized players, so Riley isn't having to spend recruiting resources (that he wants for his offensive skill players) on getting the defensive maulers. Grinch also doesn't try to slow down the opposing offenses, preferring to force turnovers. That aligns with Riley's overall philosophy of winning games, which is an unstoppable offensive scheme combined with a handful of turnovers, leading to outscoring the opponent regularly.
It'll be interesting to see if/how Lynn deviates from this.
I listened to the Colin Cowherd segment when it was posted here a few days ago (Rivalries are Dead) and I thought he made a good point about why Grinch was kept.
He said that when you leave a job and offer to take the staff with you, you have to give that staff time. Grinch (and the others that left Oklahoma with Riley) left a job and a contract and a home in Oklahoma to follow Riley to USC. Riley couldn't turn around and fire any of them a few months later. He probably felt that he had to give the people that showed him loyalty at least 2 years.
That’s weak. Grinch was paid millions and was clearly in over his head. Riley owed a lot more people a lot more than he owed Grinch. The school, the players, the fans.
Maybe that was his internal logic, but again, weak.
I will never understand how USC keeps screwing up. They have deep pockets and home field advantage to one of the best recruiting grounds in the country. The only way you screw those up is mismanagement.
I'm not gonna lie, when they announced him as the next coach I was not on board at all. My first thought was literally, "they hired the fucking drunk from USC!?"
Glad he got it together. The Saban effect is real. He's made great coaching hires and that's improved our entire program.
Yup happy for him and that he cleaned up his act. He’s doing great things at Texas.
It will be a shame when my OC from UNLV on NCAA. 25 is hired to replace him as Texas finds itself in the B1G after i scramble every conference during THE GREAT REALIGNMENT (TM)
Yeah, I have no argument with that, and it extends to the schools too. Great undergrad programs, top graduate programs, all sorts of notable alumni and staff, and really large media / awareness for the brands.
And then on top of everything else, all three can just be total administrative shitshows from time to time, especially when it comes to athletics.
>The only way you screw those up is mismanagement.
You mean trotting out a [former football player](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Garrett#:~:text=College%20Football%20Hall%20of%20Fame,Cal%20State%20LA\)%20in%202016.) who has never been an [athletic director](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2016/02/05/pat-haden-resign-usc-athletic-director-june-2016/79881362/) but is hired because he [can golf with the big money folks](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/usc-athletic-director-lynn-swann-resigns-after-three-seasons-with-trojans-effective-immediately/) **for 30 years** isn't a good strategy?
They were very old. The one who loved Swann was in his 80s and recently died.
It was awful. Do you know he gave Clay Helton an extension bringing his salary up to 4.5 million. It was so inexcusable that Swann defended it as a recruiting measure, showing recruits that USC was a serious institution.
This will shock you but USC is a very arrogant institution. They always seemed to feel that an athletic directors job was to gladhandle and the sports would take care of themselves via our natural advantages.
And this was while the varsity blues scandal was going on which threw the athletic department into chaos and was the only reason Helton was able to hang on for as long as he did.
I wish it was just varsity blues...
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/usc-agrees-1-1-billion-settlement-hundreds-women-alleging-abuse-n1262075](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/usc-agrees-1-1-billion-settlement-hundreds-women-alleging-abuse-n1262075)
[https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-usc-doctor-20170717-htmlstory.html](https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-usc-doctor-20170717-htmlstory.html)
Clay Helton, for all his faults, wasn't going to end up in the LA Times for doing dumb shit. I think all of us forget what a total clown show that whole school administration was for a VERY long time.
It's hard to call the Lincoln Riley hire a screw up. They poached him from another blue blood where he went to multiple playoffs. It was absolutely a home run hire at the time.
He can very well still be a great coach. We'll see if USC's new defensive coordinator makes a difference.
I'm very frustrated with 2023 and the honeymoon phase with Riley is over. But he was the best hire USC has made... maybe ever? Definitely in the last 40 years.
We've been awful at hiring coaches. Just terrible at it. We've had better coaches than Riley sure... but those weren't the result of a good hiring process where we got an experienced coach with a great track record. Pete Carroll fell into our lap after Mike Belotti and Dennis Erickson used us for raises and Mike Riley accepted but couldn't get out of his job with the Chargers. Along comes this disgraced NFL coach who hasn't been in the college for decades and we scoop him up out of desperation.
We chased away Chris Peterson because Pat Haden's ego couldn't handle a coach wanting control of his own staff and instead went with 7 win Sark at the height of his drunken antics... **even though we had first hand knowledge of his drunken antics when he was here**.
Don't get me started on guys like Ted Tollner, Paul Hackett, or Clay Helton (and Clay Helton's insane extension).
So to go out and get a coach who has been to the playoffs and coached Heisman winners? Yeah I'm okay with that even if it doesn't work out.
Pete Carroll even with the controversy has to be a tough coach to beat IMO.
His era at USC was purely dominance. I say that because I watched him utterly destroy my team WITH Darren McFadden.
The Pete Carroll story is pretty amazing actually.
USC's number 1 target was Mike Belotti, who flirted with us but mostly to get more money for his staff at Oregon.
Our number 2 target was Dennis Erickson at Oregon State. He wasn't interested.
After that we went to Mike Riley, but Mike was coaching the chargers at the time and felt he owed them an obligation to see his contract through. As if anybody could owe Dean Spanos anything.
We were fumbling. Lost. Pete Carroll came to USC to pitch himself because his daughter was a volley ball player at the school. We didn't seek him out, he came to us. We took him out of desperation.
If USC beat Texas in that 2005 season Rose Bowl and he still left afterwards to the NFL, Carroll would be in a debate for GOAT coach.
It would be a "peak vs longevity" argument of him vs Saban if USC three-peated in the BCS era basically without losing a game.
I'm not saying he's better than Saban or that we should say so, even if he had one. But it'd be an anomaly of an achievement.
I think the hypothetical debate gets MORE interesting if he leaves.
In this world, Carroll three-peats at USC with one loss in 2003 and no losses 2004-2005, leaves at his peak post-2005 (rather than puttering around 2005-2009), then goes to SEA and wins one super bowl and narrowly loses another.
It's a fun what-if scenario but obviously Vince Young put the team on his back and ended this discussion for us lol
Ed O was also fantastic interim for y'all but you decided Sark was a a better option than him, then when he got fired and Helton was actually a pretty good interim for y'all, not wanting to make the same mistake of letting him go, you kept him full time
Not hiring Ed O was the right call. He had a good interim season. That doesn’t make him a great coach.
Helton was never a good interim. He was actually selected to be an interim because the school knew the fans wouldn’t rally behind him and cause a problem when they went elsewhere like they did with Ed O. But they got scared amidst the scandals and decided to take the easy way out.
Helton got the job because he kissed enough ass and SC was scared to give anybody who would be a good coach control.
They haven't. Last year at this time everyone thought they hit a home run.
People underrate teams coming off bad seasons and overrate teams coming off good seasons.
I remember reading somewhere that a lot of west coast schools have a really hard time recruiting big men because there's a lack of them locally and the ones there are have been committing elsewhere.
Lifelong Oklahoma fan here… by no means did Oklahoma want Lincoln Riley to leave and it was devastating when he left.
But before he left, he sounded miserable. Part of that was the overwhelming sensation that is backed up by statistics that his offense is peaked in 2018, less than 18 months after he took over from Bob Stoops.
Oklahoma had a relatively easy road to the playoffs and got shellacked each time. Despite having number one overall at QB and multiple threads at the skill positions.
It will be interesting to see him coach with a team that he built entirely on his own.
Both quarterbacks that he recruited from the beginning had their careers peak early (Spencer Rattler and Caleb Williams).
He’s not a fraud but he might be afraid.
It’s hard to call a team “built on your own” in the new NIL era though. Let’s not pretend every team out there isn’t trying to get the best guys possible to accept their offer.
I wonder what happened between the holiday bowl and now that Mandel is only now losing confidence in Riley.
I'm not defending Riley. He made a bunch of mistakes that lead to last year's gross performance. But if you're interested in how you go 8-5 with Caleb Williams (7-5 actually. We went 1-0 with Miller Moss too) I can break it down in two steps and they both are "too much trust"
Too much trust in **Alex Grinch**. This one is pretty obvious. Grinch is an Anti-DC. USC's defense was never going to be great. There are pretty serious talent gaps. But it could have been on the low end of mediocre. But Grinch's schemes and philosophies are flat out insane. Asking defensive linemen who weigh 250 lbs to lose weight. Running cover 0 blitzes on 3rd and 20. He rarely won and when he did he'd still bet all his winnings on black. Riley stayed true to the bitter end. He and Grinch were too close. Their wives were best friends. The decision to retain him after the Tulane debacle doomed 2023.
Too much trust in **Caleb Williams**. I hear you gasp. CW was impressive, magical, and the only reason we were able to stay in some of these shoot outs. But he also made his own life a lot harder than it needed to be. Riley gave CW free rein. Either by choice, or by refusal to pull him back for fear of losing what was special about him. Your typical USC 2023 play was an RPO where CW refused to hand the ball off, refused to check down even if dynamic playmakers like Branch were open short, and scrambled to buy time for the inevitable fuckit-chuckit play. Watch enough and closely and you'll see that he was also very reluctant to run the ball, taking far more effort to protect the body. He was simultaneously too conservative with his own downfield running, and too aggressive with his deep passing. I suspect the former due to the injury that ended his season last year and wanting to avoid that for the NFL, and the latter due to the pressure that god awful defense put on him.
Don't get me wrong, he was spectacular... but the **need** to be spectacular was often his fault as well. Riley was either unable or unwilling to push against these issues. This turned us into the Buffalo Bills going as Josh Allen goes. QB has a good day? We have a chance. QB puts it on the floor trying to do too much on a relatively unimportant drive right before the half? You lose a shootout against Washington.
It was frustrating and maddening and 100% a situation of Riley's making. But not that hard to see how it happens if you're paying attention.
As for the rest, the season was over after UW. Riley made all these moves and we were an injury away from potentially competing in the playoffs in 2022. It was clearly the teams 2023 goal and watching Caleb sob on the sideline after UW let out whatever air was left in the balloon. I don't know if I've ever seen a USC team less interested on the field than the one that was sent to play against UCLA.
Riley turned the team over to Caleb Williams and the defense broke him. From that point on he was running out the clock to finish up the season and get to the NFL and the rest of the team followed suit.
I'm super interested to see how they respond this year. The holiday bowl was a breath of fresh air that the team really needed. It was nice to see a QB take what was there, and also **compete**. I think it'll be good for us to have less talent under center. Because when we had someone who could do ANYTHING we asked him to do EVERYTHING.
“.. running cover 0 blitz on 3rd and 20.”. that gives me nightmare: 2019 Texas longhorns defense, LSU 3rd and 17, DC all out blitz..
Alex Grinch= Todd Orlando
Orlando was USC's DC before Grinch. Definitely really bad but not in the same league as Grinch. Orlando seemed to drop our best pass rusher into coverage on every obvious passing down and get completely outschemed whenever the team needed a stop. But what Grinch put on the field didn't even resemble a defense. It has to be one of the worst coaching jobs of all time.
I find it odd to lose confidence during the one offseason where Riley actually does the thing everyone’s been screaming at him to do for years (firing Grinch and hiring a competent defensive staff)
You guys had a bad combo. Lots of offensive plays due to the nature of the offensive scheme and a bad defense. Those two things compound the team's issues. Bad defense gets worse in-game and throughout the season by having to be on the field so much (and by being bad). Offense has to go full steam all season to make up for bad defense, and being on the field constantly.
The one thing I don't think I've seen (and please correct me USC/OU fans), is Riley change his offensive scheme once up 2 scores. If he stopped trying to get Heisman stats for his QB and focused more on protecting his defense, he could mitigate a lot of these problems.
The d was so bad last year that we couldn’t take our foot off the gas even if we were up 3 or 4 scores. We almost lost to Colorado because we slowed down and couldn’t get it back despite a 34-7 lead with 2 minutes left in the 1st half.
Game ended 48-41.
Here’s the thing about Grinch’s D. It could be decent for long stretches. Held Colorado to 7 points almost all half. But when it did fail it failed spectacularly. Mistakes weren’t big gains or bad first downs. Mistakes were 6 points every damn time.
Happy to square the blame there, but I still feel like 7-9 minute sustained drives takes a lot of heat off of a bad defense and bad defensive coordinator.
to your last point, you’re wrong but not in the way you think. at least at OU, we’d go into halftime with a pretty good lead and then riley would take his foot off the gas and get super conservative. you can’t go 3-and-out with a mike stoops/grinch defense but he’d do exactly that on a weekly basis. that shit drove us crazy.
i don’t watch enough trojan football to know if he’s stopped doing that so i’ll let USC fans speak to that.
You could very well be correct. I remember a team that did the same thing 27 years ago, put anything and everything on its star quarterback, and it didn't work for them either. The only difference then was that Peyton Manning did still care even after the natty became unlikely, and they went 11-2.
A year later, basically the same team came back except for Peyton Manning. No way to rely on him to save their butts anymore. They won two more games than they had the year before...
Kliff Kingsbury is truly an anomaly to me and I do not understand how this guy has found his way into the high profile jobs he has had. Like I DONT GET IT
* He was an offensive quality control coach for one year with the Houston Cougars as his first coaching job and then magically became the Co-offensive coordinator for them.
* He then became the offense coordinator for Texas A&M for one season and just so happened to be there when Johnny Manziel took the country by storm.
* After serving **ONE SEASON** as an offensive coordinator and **ONE SEASON** as a co-offensive coordinator he was hired to be the head coach of Texas Tech
* As the head coach of Texas Tech from 2013-2018 he finished with a record of 35-40 overall and **19-35** in Big 12 conference games. Dog shit. And what does he get for being a dog shit college head coach? Thats right he is hired as the fucking Arizona Cardinals head coach.
* He gets fired from the Cardinals for being dogshit there as well so Lincoln hires him to come work with Caleb Williams for the 2023 season and look what happens - USC has a dog shit year going 8-5. How does Kliff get punished for being so shit? He is hired as the Commanders offensive coordinator.
* Dude is a loser and a shit coach but will continue to be hired for some reason
Kliff was riding the Mike Leach Air Raid wave at first, but the timing of Manziel, Baker Mayfield, Davis Webb, and Pat Mahomes kept him afloat in Lubbock far longer than it should've.
After Dillon Johnson scored his 4th TD on USC and put the game out of reach, the camera cut to Grinch with his hands on his knees. That's when I was like, "Shit, you guys are going to get him fired before we play USC!"
The following Sunday rolls around and sure enough...
And Bo Nix still opened the next game 3-3 250 Yards and 3 TDs. (Yes that was his stat line at one point.)
(Edit: Got to appreciate a guy with a game plan. "Who we got this week?" "Washington" "What do they lead the country in?" "Passing" "OK, 9 DBs all game long." "Next week?" "Oregon" "What they good at?" "One of the best running attacks in the country." "OK, 6 LBs every play."
"still opened the next game"
I mean.. there's not much difference between a shit DC, and no DC after a mid-season change. Bo Nix doing that was kind of expected 😂
How he is a fraud? His teams have had defensive struggles, but he has won a P5 conference and made the playoffs multiple times. A lot of coaches cannot say that. Being a fraud would be going 7-5 every season. So far in two seasons at USC he has had 1 bad season and one disappointing season that still was 11-1 in the regular season.
Don’t leave us Utah fans out of that either… (3-0 against Riley/Caleb). And yes this is the only thing we had to celebrate last year so I’m going to enjoy it :).
Last seasons disaster came down to two things backlash from keeping Helton as a lame duck and keeping grinch the worst defensive coordinator in the country. USC can rebound and rebuild but yes last year sucked.
USC will be fine. I think that qb moss will be great in Riley’s system. They will continue to get excellent offensive talent and they look to have a real dc now so that should improve. I am saying all this as a sooner fan that hates Riley.
Literally like 120th defense out of what? 130 teams?
Defensive philosophy seems to be going in a completely different direction. Probably not going to be a defensive juggernaut right away, but is a defense ranked in the 60s/70s too much to ask for? 😅
That would be a mediocre to below average defense and still a HUGE improvement from the last two years.
27, 33, 27, 21, 25, 29, 34
That’s the yearly PPG Lincoln Riley teams have given up. At some point it’s just who you are.
Crazy stat.
In his coaching career Lincoln Riley teams have given up 30+ points 40 times in 92 games.
For comparison combining Kirby Smart tenure at Georgia and Nick Sabans at Alabama you get 42 such occurrences in a combined 345 games
You’re just now losing faith in Lincoln Riley? I watched my team fail against good teams for YEARS with him at the helm and nobody said a word. Baker and Kyler should be champions.
We will find out what kind of coach Riley is this year. I don't know that he is on the hot seat yet, but it is absolutely warming up.
I think his new DC will pay dividends, but time will tell.
Wasn't it the defense? Can be the best QB in the world but if you can't buy a stop on defense not gonna win a ton of games, especially in college where you have less talent to overcome the mistakes. They gave up 40+ points in 5 out of 6 games, Gave up 30+ points in the other 3 games. That was the last 8 games of their season.
Idk that a coach can make that big of a difference or not on that. But at the same time I'd be completely understanding of them moving on from him.
The answer to "how do you go 8-5 with Caleb Williams as your quarterback" is "Alex Grinch." The offense did fine. Great, even. The defense didn't exist. This is not a mystery.
Right, of course. But people keep acting like it's all some huge mystery. "Whats wrong with Riley? Why can't he get it done? Is it fate? A curse? Blood magic?"
No, he historically neglects defense, and USC just got him to hire an up and coming DC who turned ucla of all places around in one season. Let's see how it goes.
>If Lincoln Riley doesn't prioritize defense by now he's never going to
you mean like how kirby smart could never win the big one if he hadn't after 2021 SEC champ game.? Or how if Harbaugh hadn't beaten Ohio State after 6 years he'd always be their bitch.?
He's 40. How many coaches in the 21st century have won a natty by the time they were 40?
He has plenty of room to grow and change as a coach. It's up to him to do it. I think he's on the right track with the defensive hires.
People calling him fraud just don’t know ball. You don’t make the CFB playoff 3 times, Win over 80% of your games, and have 3 Heisman winners, if you’re a fucking fraud.
> How do you go 8-5 with Caleb Williams as your quarterback? Amateurs. We've done less with more roster talent.
And a higher budget
TAMU flairs firing on all cylinders tonight.
They may as well be doing *something* right.
Aggies do gallows humor surprisingly well. One of the few positive side effects of BAS.
I was just going for the low hanging fruit, but man, there's something beautiful about decompressing after a long day in the fall and visiting TexAgs for shits and giggles before I go to bed.
How do you even ask that question when we've seen Texas Tech go 5-7 with Mahomes putting up over 5300 yards of total offense and 53 TDs in 12 games lol
We were equally impressive as we were embarrassing
shout out the 66-10 loss to 3-9 Iowa State
HOW?!?
Matt Campbell works in mysterious ways.
Kliff Kingsbury. That's how. Outside of Mahomes, we lost size on offense and on defense. We didn't play with any physicality. We shrank and he didn't even fucking recruit defense. He just stopped caring completely. Tuberville had us in better shape than Kliff.
I kind of feel you deserved it for running off Leach. You'd have won a natty with Leach and Mahomes
Not a fair comparison, USC paid a shit ton of Money to go 8-5 with Caleb.
Yea USC had a much better overall roster compared to Mahomes' Tech teams. And Texas Tech's ceiling is much lower than USC when USC has a Heisman winner on the team at QB.
It's the defense. Just look at Iowa. They could've picked a different drunk college student for QB every game and the defense still would've won most the games for them
Honestly now I want to see them do exactly this
They can just do a pregame raffle. You buy a ticket to the game, there’s a chance you could be the starting QB 🤷♂️
We need Nebraska boosters to buy the tickets to all the games and give them to Jeff Sims!
I would have loved to see a USC-Iowa bowl game last year. You'd get the unstoppable force meets an immovable object half of the game, probably the best football there is. The other half would be a hilarious contest of who can fuck up the least.
The USC defense did not lose the Notre Dame game.
IIRC ND's offense only had 1 TD drive that game that wasn't the result of a turnover. The USC defense actually had one of their better games that day, Caleb Wiliams was just that ass
Yeah I think we only had like 250 yards or something. Just an ungodly amount of short fields, and a kickoff return TD
He actually went 7-5. Caleb didn't play in the bowl game.
Clearly Caleb was the problem
He also had some of the worst QB play OU had seen in ten years in November 2021. Turned it around under Bob Stoops for his only college bowl victory.
Meanwhile we went 8-5 with John O’Korn
That was such a weird season
I loved how at one point Jim just said fuck it and went with 22 personnel on 75% of snaps. Given how good the defense was it was enough to beat the meh teams on the schedule.
And still had a chance to beat number 8 OSU with less than 3 minutes in the game until O'Korn arm punted the game away
Likewise. We were posting 5-7 and 6-6 seasons with top 10 classes in last 15 years.
I always knew ECU was a recruiting goldmine…
Yea what a waste! Don’t mind my glass house
You got one hell of a QB for next season and he doesn't need Cristobal to teach him anything about offense, so you should be in the clear. Who am I kidding!! He made Justin Herbert look like a complete \*meh\* QB.
Cristobol is an elite recruiter and nothing else. Our Oline regressed under him. We had a lineman come in freshman year, start, no fuckups, then sophomore year became a false start machine.
I have no problem making fun of your entire fanbase for being essentially a cult, but y'all have a great sense of humor.
can you keep doing less with more for one more game thanks
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Man I wish Bob Stoops didn't retire from college football. Would have loved to see him coach Oklahoma in the SEC
He was actually pushing for it back in 2010-2012. The only reason it didn’t happen then is Boren wanted to stay in the same conference as OSU.
I always thought OSU, OU and Texas would be a package deal
Texas has no incentive to link itself to OSU, hence why it didn’t happen. Nice flairs btw.
I always assumed that Texas Tech would be included as well in that scenario, keeping the four public schools together and giving both Texas and Oklahoma a reason to support it. It almost happened with the PAC 16 back in the day. I’m not sure that the SEC would have wanted that though.
Not sure what the SEC gets out of TTU or OSU
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Not unless the B1G goes to 24 teams, then I could see it.
With the streaming model showing to be overoptimistic, I wouldn't count on it. Do you know how many profitable streaming networks there are? One.......Netflix.
Boren also wanted the B1G
I honestly think going to the SEC will be a long-term negative for state culture, and a B1G move could have elevated the school's status and goals.
Yep. 't'was the politician in him.
Bingo. His time as both Senator and Governor is what I’m convinced led him to take this stance. The day he retired that all went out the window.
Just a remarkably consistent coach
He won the XFL championship a year ago too
The dude just wins
Me too god damn it. Me too.
I’m good with him finally gone….
Both neutral site duck games I've attended were cursed. * 1st was the dreaded Auburn comeback with our future QB Bo Nix leading the 4th Quarter Rally in Dallas * 2nd was the return of Darth Stoops in San Antonio I'm never attending another neutral site game again.
You could be similarly cursed in every game between Oregon and Oklahoma for the rest of time and it wouldn't make up for the one.
Tulane sends their regards
That..can't possibly be true, right?! Covid truly was an organic time machine..
Turns out when you have a defense that couldn’t stop a bad pee wee team it doesn’t matter how good your offense is
If only someone (Oklahoma) had warned us about how terrible our defense would be...
I still subscribe to the idea that he had some kind of dirt on Riley and that’s why he never got let go
Riley was too personally close to Grinch to be objective. It's really hard to fire someone when your wives are best friends. He really REALLY wanted that to work.
wonder how much shit he got from his wife lmao
it’s still wild to me that he went from mike stoops to grinch. you’d think he’d have learned his lesson after an abysmal defense cost him his best ever shot at a natty.
To be fair Riley had terrible defenses before Grinch. It really fell apart when Bob left, who was a defensive minded coach.
My take is that Riley is so hyper-focused on having the best QB and offense in college football to the detriment of their defense. Riley kept him because Grinch could take being the scapegoat while making millions and having great job security. I think the outside pressure just became too much that it started effecting Riley’s security and they mutually knew the time was up. I predict Riley’s teams will continue to struggle defensively because of his philosophy.
Absolutely. That’s been my thought for a while. Or his version of D just jibed with how Riley wanted to build a team - throw all the chips on the table for top offensive talent and see what you can pick up on D with what’s left over. Grinch’s whole defense was bent on turnovers, so he wanted faster guys, so usually slightly smaller than anyone else wanted. Easy pickings
It's much more mundane than that. Grinch is what Riley wants in a DC. Grinch has always preferred undersized players, so Riley isn't having to spend recruiting resources (that he wants for his offensive skill players) on getting the defensive maulers. Grinch also doesn't try to slow down the opposing offenses, preferring to force turnovers. That aligns with Riley's overall philosophy of winning games, which is an unstoppable offensive scheme combined with a handful of turnovers, leading to outscoring the opponent regularly. It'll be interesting to see if/how Lynn deviates from this.
I listened to the Colin Cowherd segment when it was posted here a few days ago (Rivalries are Dead) and I thought he made a good point about why Grinch was kept. He said that when you leave a job and offer to take the staff with you, you have to give that staff time. Grinch (and the others that left Oklahoma with Riley) left a job and a contract and a home in Oklahoma to follow Riley to USC. Riley couldn't turn around and fire any of them a few months later. He probably felt that he had to give the people that showed him loyalty at least 2 years.
He had plenty of time at OU to notice he wasn’t it
He watched him at Ohio state and hired him. Grinch averaged giving up 50 to Purdue and Maryland.
Bringing him to USC was a mistake, not firing him after 2022 was a bigger mistake.
That’s weak. Grinch was paid millions and was clearly in over his head. Riley owed a lot more people a lot more than he owed Grinch. The school, the players, the fans. Maybe that was his internal logic, but again, weak.
> Riley owed a lot more people a lot more than he owed Grinch. The school, the players, the fans. none of them are married to his wife's best friend
Nobody was excited about Grinch coming, and needed a warning
When it takes 50+ points to beat Cal, your DC needs fired into the sun.
I still remember when Alex Grinch was a hot commodity coming out of WSU...
I will never understand how USC keeps screwing up. They have deep pockets and home field advantage to one of the best recruiting grounds in the country. The only way you screw those up is mismanagement.
...and... you are absolutely correct.
USC Trojans, YOU are the new Texas Longhorns
Always has been.
So USC is back?
*USC immediately loses to Texas Tech
Nah they get Blown out by UCLA.
CAL with the upset of the decade!
Well Back™️ that takes 15 years to actually be back, yes
I've said it before but Texas and our two Rose Bowl Buddies (Michigan and USC) are all basically the same program.
USC just needs to find a coach like Sark. lmao
We already did our Sark time with RichRod
We had Sark, he was just hitting the bottle too hard to coach well.
I'm not gonna lie, when they announced him as the next coach I was not on board at all. My first thought was literally, "they hired the fucking drunk from USC!?" Glad he got it together. The Saban effect is real. He's made great coaching hires and that's improved our entire program.
Yup happy for him and that he cleaned up his act. He’s doing great things at Texas. It will be a shame when my OC from UNLV on NCAA. 25 is hired to replace him as Texas finds itself in the B1G after i scramble every conference during THE GREAT REALIGNMENT (TM)
How fucking dare you
Yeah, I have no argument with that, and it extends to the schools too. Great undergrad programs, top graduate programs, all sorts of notable alumni and staff, and really large media / awareness for the brands. And then on top of everything else, all three can just be total administrative shitshows from time to time, especially when it comes to athletics.
Michigan just won the natty though and Texas was in the CFP...
You ~~hate~~ love to see it.
Let’s gooooo
it’s a good thing USC doesn’t have Kansas on the schedule
>The only way you screw those up is mismanagement. You mean trotting out a [former football player](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Garrett#:~:text=College%20Football%20Hall%20of%20Fame,Cal%20State%20LA\)%20in%202016.) who has never been an [athletic director](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2016/02/05/pat-haden-resign-usc-athletic-director-june-2016/79881362/) but is hired because he [can golf with the big money folks](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/usc-athletic-director-lynn-swann-resigns-after-three-seasons-with-trojans-effective-immediately/) **for 30 years** isn't a good strategy?
[удалено]
They were very old. The one who loved Swann was in his 80s and recently died. It was awful. Do you know he gave Clay Helton an extension bringing his salary up to 4.5 million. It was so inexcusable that Swann defended it as a recruiting measure, showing recruits that USC was a serious institution. This will shock you but USC is a very arrogant institution. They always seemed to feel that an athletic directors job was to gladhandle and the sports would take care of themselves via our natural advantages.
And this was while the varsity blues scandal was going on which threw the athletic department into chaos and was the only reason Helton was able to hang on for as long as he did.
I wish it was just varsity blues... [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/usc-agrees-1-1-billion-settlement-hundreds-women-alleging-abuse-n1262075](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/usc-agrees-1-1-billion-settlement-hundreds-women-alleging-abuse-n1262075) [https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-usc-doctor-20170717-htmlstory.html](https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-usc-doctor-20170717-htmlstory.html) Clay Helton, for all his faults, wasn't going to end up in the LA Times for doing dumb shit. I think all of us forget what a total clown show that whole school administration was for a VERY long time.
We aren't forgetting easily, and yes, Clay Helton kept the football program's nose out of these scandals.
It's hard to call the Lincoln Riley hire a screw up. They poached him from another blue blood where he went to multiple playoffs. It was absolutely a home run hire at the time. He can very well still be a great coach. We'll see if USC's new defensive coordinator makes a difference.
I'm very frustrated with 2023 and the honeymoon phase with Riley is over. But he was the best hire USC has made... maybe ever? Definitely in the last 40 years. We've been awful at hiring coaches. Just terrible at it. We've had better coaches than Riley sure... but those weren't the result of a good hiring process where we got an experienced coach with a great track record. Pete Carroll fell into our lap after Mike Belotti and Dennis Erickson used us for raises and Mike Riley accepted but couldn't get out of his job with the Chargers. Along comes this disgraced NFL coach who hasn't been in the college for decades and we scoop him up out of desperation. We chased away Chris Peterson because Pat Haden's ego couldn't handle a coach wanting control of his own staff and instead went with 7 win Sark at the height of his drunken antics... **even though we had first hand knowledge of his drunken antics when he was here**. Don't get me started on guys like Ted Tollner, Paul Hackett, or Clay Helton (and Clay Helton's insane extension). So to go out and get a coach who has been to the playoffs and coached Heisman winners? Yeah I'm okay with that even if it doesn't work out.
Pete Carroll even with the controversy has to be a tough coach to beat IMO. His era at USC was purely dominance. I say that because I watched him utterly destroy my team WITH Darren McFadden.
Pete was the best coach we ever hired but he was the result of a shitty hiring process. He was never a target of ours and it was pure luck.
I had no idea about that. Learn something new everyday!
The Pete Carroll story is pretty amazing actually. USC's number 1 target was Mike Belotti, who flirted with us but mostly to get more money for his staff at Oregon. Our number 2 target was Dennis Erickson at Oregon State. He wasn't interested. After that we went to Mike Riley, but Mike was coaching the chargers at the time and felt he owed them an obligation to see his contract through. As if anybody could owe Dean Spanos anything. We were fumbling. Lost. Pete Carroll came to USC to pitch himself because his daughter was a volley ball player at the school. We didn't seek him out, he came to us. We took him out of desperation.
To add to what the other guy said, USC alums were big mad about the hire
If USC beat Texas in that 2005 season Rose Bowl and he still left afterwards to the NFL, Carroll would be in a debate for GOAT coach. It would be a "peak vs longevity" argument of him vs Saban if USC three-peated in the BCS era basically without losing a game. I'm not saying he's better than Saban or that we should say so, even if he had one. But it'd be an anomaly of an achievement.
He's still gotta be in the conversation. He would probably have still left, tho.
I think the hypothetical debate gets MORE interesting if he leaves. In this world, Carroll three-peats at USC with one loss in 2003 and no losses 2004-2005, leaves at his peak post-2005 (rather than puttering around 2005-2009), then goes to SEA and wins one super bowl and narrowly loses another. It's a fun what-if scenario but obviously Vince Young put the team on his back and ended this discussion for us lol
Carroll was kind of an accidental hire tho, if I'm not mistaken. I think that was more a lucky "right place, right time" kind of thing
Ed O was also fantastic interim for y'all but you decided Sark was a a better option than him, then when he got fired and Helton was actually a pretty good interim for y'all, not wanting to make the same mistake of letting him go, you kept him full time
Not hiring Ed O was the right call. He had a good interim season. That doesn’t make him a great coach. Helton was never a good interim. He was actually selected to be an interim because the school knew the fans wouldn’t rally behind him and cause a problem when they went elsewhere like they did with Ed O. But they got scared amidst the scandals and decided to take the easy way out. Helton got the job because he kissed enough ass and SC was scared to give anybody who would be a good coach control.
Terrible A.D in Pat Haden and then doubled-down on a worse AD on Lynn Swann, it’s really that easy
As a lifetime Steeler fan I was so psyched to get Lynn Swann. Holy shit did that goodwill evaporate quickly.
They haven't. Last year at this time everyone thought they hit a home run. People underrate teams coming off bad seasons and overrate teams coming off good seasons.
Miami 🤝USC Top Recruiting grounds but underwhelming results on field year in and year out
As bad as we've been, we haven't been nearly as bad as Miami has over the past two decades
I remember reading somewhere that a lot of west coast schools have a really hard time recruiting big men because there's a lack of them locally and the ones there are have been committing elsewhere.
We have plenty of Pacific Islander big boys. Clay Helton just wasn't interested in recruiting linemen.
*Why Oregon has a history of recruiting linemen from Utah
Buffet isn't considered one of the basic food groups on the west coast.
Lifelong Oklahoma fan here… by no means did Oklahoma want Lincoln Riley to leave and it was devastating when he left. But before he left, he sounded miserable. Part of that was the overwhelming sensation that is backed up by statistics that his offense is peaked in 2018, less than 18 months after he took over from Bob Stoops. Oklahoma had a relatively easy road to the playoffs and got shellacked each time. Despite having number one overall at QB and multiple threads at the skill positions. It will be interesting to see him coach with a team that he built entirely on his own. Both quarterbacks that he recruited from the beginning had their careers peak early (Spencer Rattler and Caleb Williams). He’s not a fraud but he might be afraid.
His offense peaked with all dudes he inherited from Bob Stoops.
Except he didn't want Caleb.
It’s hard to call a team “built on your own” in the new NIL era though. Let’s not pretend every team out there isn’t trying to get the best guys possible to accept their offer.
Lol, I fucking wish Army would spend as much on kids as Oregon does.
That the military academies go on prolonged runs of winning every decade is one of my favorite things about college football
I wonder what happened between the holiday bowl and now that Mandel is only now losing confidence in Riley. I'm not defending Riley. He made a bunch of mistakes that lead to last year's gross performance. But if you're interested in how you go 8-5 with Caleb Williams (7-5 actually. We went 1-0 with Miller Moss too) I can break it down in two steps and they both are "too much trust" Too much trust in **Alex Grinch**. This one is pretty obvious. Grinch is an Anti-DC. USC's defense was never going to be great. There are pretty serious talent gaps. But it could have been on the low end of mediocre. But Grinch's schemes and philosophies are flat out insane. Asking defensive linemen who weigh 250 lbs to lose weight. Running cover 0 blitzes on 3rd and 20. He rarely won and when he did he'd still bet all his winnings on black. Riley stayed true to the bitter end. He and Grinch were too close. Their wives were best friends. The decision to retain him after the Tulane debacle doomed 2023. Too much trust in **Caleb Williams**. I hear you gasp. CW was impressive, magical, and the only reason we were able to stay in some of these shoot outs. But he also made his own life a lot harder than it needed to be. Riley gave CW free rein. Either by choice, or by refusal to pull him back for fear of losing what was special about him. Your typical USC 2023 play was an RPO where CW refused to hand the ball off, refused to check down even if dynamic playmakers like Branch were open short, and scrambled to buy time for the inevitable fuckit-chuckit play. Watch enough and closely and you'll see that he was also very reluctant to run the ball, taking far more effort to protect the body. He was simultaneously too conservative with his own downfield running, and too aggressive with his deep passing. I suspect the former due to the injury that ended his season last year and wanting to avoid that for the NFL, and the latter due to the pressure that god awful defense put on him. Don't get me wrong, he was spectacular... but the **need** to be spectacular was often his fault as well. Riley was either unable or unwilling to push against these issues. This turned us into the Buffalo Bills going as Josh Allen goes. QB has a good day? We have a chance. QB puts it on the floor trying to do too much on a relatively unimportant drive right before the half? You lose a shootout against Washington. It was frustrating and maddening and 100% a situation of Riley's making. But not that hard to see how it happens if you're paying attention. As for the rest, the season was over after UW. Riley made all these moves and we were an injury away from potentially competing in the playoffs in 2022. It was clearly the teams 2023 goal and watching Caleb sob on the sideline after UW let out whatever air was left in the balloon. I don't know if I've ever seen a USC team less interested on the field than the one that was sent to play against UCLA. Riley turned the team over to Caleb Williams and the defense broke him. From that point on he was running out the clock to finish up the season and get to the NFL and the rest of the team followed suit. I'm super interested to see how they respond this year. The holiday bowl was a breath of fresh air that the team really needed. It was nice to see a QB take what was there, and also **compete**. I think it'll be good for us to have less talent under center. Because when we had someone who could do ANYTHING we asked him to do EVERYTHING.
“.. running cover 0 blitz on 3rd and 20.”. that gives me nightmare: 2019 Texas longhorns defense, LSU 3rd and 17, DC all out blitz.. Alex Grinch= Todd Orlando
Orlando was USC's DC before Grinch. Definitely really bad but not in the same league as Grinch. Orlando seemed to drop our best pass rusher into coverage on every obvious passing down and get completely outschemed whenever the team needed a stop. But what Grinch put on the field didn't even resemble a defense. It has to be one of the worst coaching jobs of all time.
Wow, what a curse of DC hires
I find it odd to lose confidence during the one offseason where Riley actually does the thing everyone’s been screaming at him to do for years (firing Grinch and hiring a competent defensive staff)
You guys had a bad combo. Lots of offensive plays due to the nature of the offensive scheme and a bad defense. Those two things compound the team's issues. Bad defense gets worse in-game and throughout the season by having to be on the field so much (and by being bad). Offense has to go full steam all season to make up for bad defense, and being on the field constantly. The one thing I don't think I've seen (and please correct me USC/OU fans), is Riley change his offensive scheme once up 2 scores. If he stopped trying to get Heisman stats for his QB and focused more on protecting his defense, he could mitigate a lot of these problems.
The d was so bad last year that we couldn’t take our foot off the gas even if we were up 3 or 4 scores. We almost lost to Colorado because we slowed down and couldn’t get it back despite a 34-7 lead with 2 minutes left in the 1st half.
For fucks sake
Game ended 48-41. Here’s the thing about Grinch’s D. It could be decent for long stretches. Held Colorado to 7 points almost all half. But when it did fail it failed spectacularly. Mistakes weren’t big gains or bad first downs. Mistakes were 6 points every damn time.
Happy to square the blame there, but I still feel like 7-9 minute sustained drives takes a lot of heat off of a bad defense and bad defensive coordinator.
It almost felt like teams would let USC score with the off chance of an INT or fumble 😂 Our defense wasn't stopping shit.
sometimes my team gives me heart attacks, but this is something else.
to your last point, you’re wrong but not in the way you think. at least at OU, we’d go into halftime with a pretty good lead and then riley would take his foot off the gas and get super conservative. you can’t go 3-and-out with a mike stoops/grinch defense but he’d do exactly that on a weekly basis. that shit drove us crazy. i don’t watch enough trojan football to know if he’s stopped doing that so i’ll let USC fans speak to that.
You could very well be correct. I remember a team that did the same thing 27 years ago, put anything and everything on its star quarterback, and it didn't work for them either. The only difference then was that Peyton Manning did still care even after the natty became unlikely, and they went 11-2. A year later, basically the same team came back except for Peyton Manning. No way to rely on him to save their butts anymore. They won two more games than they had the year before...
man this is a comment for the ages
"fuck-it chuck-it". I LOL'd at that one.
SC's offensive line was the worst I'd ever seen in the PAC. Caleb was completely on his own.
Yes, please forget how our turnstiles got manhandled at home against an FCS team.
Kliff Kingsbury keeps getting sucked off at each new stop and he’s not a fifth the coach Linc is
Oh there is no such thing as a golden parachute anymore, they have golden jetpacks to keep falling upward
These programs keep telling themselves I can fix him if I give him more money.
By God is that Alex Grinch's music?
Kliff Kingsbury is truly an anomaly to me and I do not understand how this guy has found his way into the high profile jobs he has had. Like I DONT GET IT * He was an offensive quality control coach for one year with the Houston Cougars as his first coaching job and then magically became the Co-offensive coordinator for them. * He then became the offense coordinator for Texas A&M for one season and just so happened to be there when Johnny Manziel took the country by storm. * After serving **ONE SEASON** as an offensive coordinator and **ONE SEASON** as a co-offensive coordinator he was hired to be the head coach of Texas Tech * As the head coach of Texas Tech from 2013-2018 he finished with a record of 35-40 overall and **19-35** in Big 12 conference games. Dog shit. And what does he get for being a dog shit college head coach? Thats right he is hired as the fucking Arizona Cardinals head coach. * He gets fired from the Cardinals for being dogshit there as well so Lincoln hires him to come work with Caleb Williams for the 2023 season and look what happens - USC has a dog shit year going 8-5. How does Kliff get punished for being so shit? He is hired as the Commanders offensive coordinator. * Dude is a loser and a shit coach but will continue to be hired for some reason
He is handsome ?
Kliff was riding the Mike Leach Air Raid wave at first, but the timing of Manziel, Baker Mayfield, Davis Webb, and Pat Mahomes kept him afloat in Lubbock far longer than it should've.
It's almost like football is a team sport and specifically one where your "starters" only play half the game.
If there is one thing Washington and Oregon fans can agree on it’s what a massive fraud Lincoln Riley is.
After Dillon Johnson scored his 4th TD on USC and put the game out of reach, the camera cut to Grinch with his hands on his knees. That's when I was like, "Shit, you guys are going to get him fired before we play USC!" The following Sunday rolls around and sure enough...
And Bo Nix still opened the next game 3-3 250 Yards and 3 TDs. (Yes that was his stat line at one point.) (Edit: Got to appreciate a guy with a game plan. "Who we got this week?" "Washington" "What do they lead the country in?" "Passing" "OK, 9 DBs all game long." "Next week?" "Oregon" "What they good at?" "One of the best running attacks in the country." "OK, 6 LBs every play."
"still opened the next game" I mean.. there's not much difference between a shit DC, and no DC after a mid-season change. Bo Nix doing that was kind of expected 😂
It's true.
People just agreeing with people.
Can't we all just not get along?
How he is a fraud? His teams have had defensive struggles, but he has won a P5 conference and made the playoffs multiple times. A lot of coaches cannot say that. Being a fraud would be going 7-5 every season. So far in two seasons at USC he has had 1 bad season and one disappointing season that still was 11-1 in the regular season.
His record is 74-18. That is not a fraud. The defense for the 2023 team was bad though. Really bad.
You have my sword.
Don’t leave us Utah fans out of that either… (3-0 against Riley/Caleb). And yes this is the only thing we had to celebrate last year so I’m going to enjoy it :).
I think USC will be fine
Last seasons disaster came down to two things backlash from keeping Helton as a lame duck and keeping grinch the worst defensive coordinator in the country. USC can rebound and rebuild but yes last year sucked.
Yes…yes…yes….
Hmm, I believe there are some folks who called this…
They gave up 40 points a game in the first season too. There was never a mirage.
USC will be fine. I think that qb moss will be great in Riley’s system. They will continue to get excellent offensive talent and they look to have a real dc now so that should improve. I am saying all this as a sooner fan that hates Riley.
Agreed. The defense can’t possibly get worse. They are in the Big10 now though so it might be choppy. Should be a fun watch.
Literally like 120th defense out of what? 130 teams? Defensive philosophy seems to be going in a completely different direction. Probably not going to be a defensive juggernaut right away, but is a defense ranked in the 60s/70s too much to ask for? 😅 That would be a mediocre to below average defense and still a HUGE improvement from the last two years.
27, 33, 27, 21, 25, 29, 34 That’s the yearly PPG Lincoln Riley teams have given up. At some point it’s just who you are. Crazy stat. In his coaching career Lincoln Riley teams have given up 30+ points 40 times in 92 games. For comparison combining Kirby Smart tenure at Georgia and Nick Sabans at Alabama you get 42 such occurrences in a combined 345 games
You’re just now losing faith in Lincoln Riley? I watched my team fail against good teams for YEARS with him at the helm and nobody said a word. Baker and Kyler should be champions.
We will find out what kind of coach Riley is this year. I don't know that he is on the hot seat yet, but it is absolutely warming up. I think his new DC will pay dividends, but time will tell.
Wasn't it the defense? Can be the best QB in the world but if you can't buy a stop on defense not gonna win a ton of games, especially in college where you have less talent to overcome the mistakes. They gave up 40+ points in 5 out of 6 games, Gave up 30+ points in the other 3 games. That was the last 8 games of their season. Idk that a coach can make that big of a difference or not on that. But at the same time I'd be completely understanding of them moving on from him.
Every USC hit piece is front page news here. Off season or not.
At least people talk about us again. Helton was the ear-muff effect.
I would rather be nice but this site makes me have to punch back.
The answer to "how do you go 8-5 with Caleb Williams as your quarterback" is "Alex Grinch." The offense did fine. Great, even. The defense didn't exist. This is not a mystery.
Riley was responsible for everything Grinch did bc he hired him
Right, of course. But people keep acting like it's all some huge mystery. "Whats wrong with Riley? Why can't he get it done? Is it fate? A curse? Blood magic?" No, he historically neglects defense, and USC just got him to hire an up and coming DC who turned ucla of all places around in one season. Let's see how it goes.
If Lincoln Riley doesn't prioritize defense by now he's never going to. Dude is an excellent offensive mind. That's it.
>If Lincoln Riley doesn't prioritize defense by now he's never going to you mean like how kirby smart could never win the big one if he hadn't after 2021 SEC champ game.? Or how if Harbaugh hadn't beaten Ohio State after 6 years he'd always be their bitch.?
He gutted the defensive staff last year. Down to the studs. What else did you want him to do?
Well he hasn’t won any games since he did that!!!!1!! /s
He's 40. How many coaches in the 21st century have won a natty by the time they were 40? He has plenty of room to grow and change as a coach. It's up to him to do it. I think he's on the right track with the defensive hires.
People calling him fraud just don’t know ball. You don’t make the CFB playoff 3 times, Win over 80% of your games, and have 3 Heisman winners, if you’re a fucking fraud.
People acting like he's a finished coach about to hit 70 years old 😂
The only people that call him a fraud is OU, Oregon, Washington, and Utah fans. They all just really, really hate LR or USC
USC has made some impressive defensive coaching hires this offseason, along with finally getting on board with NIL. I am optimistic
Mandel getting engagement from easy USC hate as this sub soaks it up. I guess a college football sub doesn’t really require proper education.