This is a guest post from Sam Stockton of Gulo Gulo Hockey.
There are two fundamental truths about this past offseason at USC.
Firstly, the Trojans poached head coach Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma, who brought with him quarterback Caleb Williams and several other Sooners, along with Pitt wideout Jordan Addison, through the transfer portal.
Secondly, USC and crosstown rival UCLA announced plans to depart from the Pac-12 in favor of Midwestern values and the prospect of Kinnick Stadium on a crisp Iowan evening.
It’s fair to wonder if the two are related. Was Lincoln Riley – whose departure from OU was quickly attributed by spurned Sooner fans to fear of the Crimson and Cream’s impending conference leap to the SEC – hired with a move to the Big Ten in mind?
Several have reported, or at least insinuated, that the Texas Longhorns hired Steve Sarkisian to help ease the transition into the SEC, even if that move wasn’t made public until months later. Sarkisian was a recent graduate of the Nick Saban School for Wayward Coaches, having coordinated a national title-winning offense at Alabama in 2020.
USC announced Riley’s hiring on Nov. 28, 2021, roughly seven months before the forthcoming move to the Big Ten became public. Such a maneuver would likely take more than six months of planning.
Riley’s fit in his future conference is, at this point, a little muddy. His air raid roots do not exactly suggest Big Ten DNA, and you might recall that on occasion, Big Ten weather has made life difficult on pass-happy offenses. Even USC’s history with the air raid is checkered at best. As it ushered Riley in, it disposed of former Mike Leach-era Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell, who served as the offensive coordinator in LA for three underwhelming seasons.
The identity of the last great Trojan teams, those of the 2000s under former head coach Pete Carroll, took their cues from a dominant front seven packed with Sunday players. To be sure, there were offensive stars like Reggie Bush, Dwayne Jarrett, Matt Leinart and Carson Palmer, but the mediocre teams trailing Carroll’s tenure had those too.
None were Bush, but Ronald Jones, Marqise Lee, Drake London and JuJu Smith-Schuster are an entirely respectable bunch. What the Trojans couldn’t seem to rediscover were facsimiles of Sedrick Ellis, Rey Maualuga or Frostee Rucker.
This is not to assume Riley will struggle with the transition to the Big Ten; rather, it’s to underscore the confusion around the co-occurrence of his move to the West Coast and USC’s to the Big Ten.
Setting aside the questions of how a Riley offense might function within a Big Ten schedule or what the timetable for national championship contention might be, we don’t yet have crucial information about what life will look like for his program. Until Labor Day weekend, we didn’t know the playoff format for which his Trojans will vie to qualify.
Before the announcement of CFP expansion, it appeared the Pac-12 would afford Riley and company an easier path to a four-team playoff. With that number ballooning to 12, that road will be easier, but the pressure on Riley to make near-annual appearances will also skyrocket – if only because it’s difficult to imagine the powers that be at Heritage Hall acquiescing to a reality in which their program is not one of the nation’s best annually.
This, again, sparks more questions than it answers. USC didn’t break the bank to bring Riley aboard to win 10 games a year, but establishing itself as the top dog in a conference that already features Ohio State is a tall order. The prospect of an annual shootout between the Trojans and Buckeyes is a welcome spectacle and you could go as far as to identify it as one of the primary reasons behind the Trojans’ move. However, from a pure football perspective, the presence of the Ohio State Death Star is an undeniable threat to whatever it is Lincoln Riley wants to build.
It’s a threat, too, to the idea of a strong USC as a flag-bearer for western college football. A fully-powered Trojans outfit would, in theory, help to re-nationalize the sport after a period of intense southern dominance. Is that possible if USC scarcely competes with other western schools?
Expectations for Riley’s first season in Los Angeles reflected this same confusion. On one hand, the timing afforded the coach the opportunity for an unprecedented turnaround. On the other, this program won four games a year ago – which seems to have installed some awareness in the college football viewing public that true title contention this season is far-fetched.
Williams and Addison were, for good reason, the most ballyhooed of Riley’s incoming transfers, but they were hardly the only two. Mario Williams, the nation’s fourth-ranked wide receiver coming out of high school a year ago also joined the Trojans by way of Norman. Running back Travis Dye, fresh off a 1,200-yard, 16-touchdown season with Oregon also opted to head south to LA. On the defensive side of the ball, Riley bolstered his roster with additions like former Sooner cornerback Latrell McCutchin and linebacker Shane Lee, a four-star recruit arriving after three seasons at Alabama.
Of course, the need for such an extensive foray into the transfer market also offers a reminder of the depths to which Clay Helton’s USC sank. In the twelve years between Carroll’s and Helton’s final games at the helm, the assurance that any recruit of note born west of the Rockies would land with the Trojans evaporated. The best players on each of the three heaviest favorites for this year’s playoff are all California natives: Alabama’s Bryce Young, Georgia’s Brock Bowers, and Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud.
Even with the unprecedented influx of transfer talent, restoring USC to the level it expects probably won’t be an overnight process. These Trojans could emerge from the Pac-12 and make the College Football Playoff, but keeping up with the Joneses in Athens, Columbus and Tuscaloosa is a different story.
Heritage Hall seemed not to dwell on the latter, and as the Trojans sit at 6-0, optimism around the program has only grown. There is no true precedent for a coach leaving a program as blue-blooded as Oklahoma for another NCAA coaching gig, so contextualizing Riley’s results here is always going to be tricky. That he has made this jump in the age of the transfer portal has allowed for a year-one roster revamp unlike anything the sport has ever seen.
Scouring the first six weeks of this new era does little to assuage, well, any of this. USC’s box scores are a Rorschach test – you can see a playoff team or one years from true contention depending only on your personal preference.
If you believe in Riley’s Trojans, you can point to an offense putting up 42.2 points per game and Williams’ efficiency as a passer with a 64.9 completion percentage, 14 touchdowns, and just one interception. You could argue they showed championship perseverance in warding off a frisky Oregon State team in a fixture that has undone USC before. This team is unbeaten, and that’s a success in its own right.
The other side can identify obvious reasons for skepticism. USC has struggled to finish off its Pac-12 opponents:
It had issues closing the door on a Stanford team with one win on the season; Williams and the passing game never seemed to get off the ground against Oregon State; A week five home win over Arizona State followed a similar script to the Stanford game – USC was strong offensively but the defense struggled to close down a bad Arizona State attack; Against Washington State, Riley and the Trojans may have provided their most convincing performance of the season to date – overcoming a back-and-forth first half to earn a 30-14 victory. That’s a bit of a damning statement in itself.
This weekend, USC will travel north to take on the Utes in the Utahn capital. When they do, if only for this coming season, we will finally get some clarity on Riley’s USC. The Utes stumbled last weekend in Pasadena, falling 42-32 to UCLA. With tight end Brant Kuithe out for the season, the Utes don’t have the same offensive spark they showed earlier in the season. Nonetheless, this is a Kyle Whittingham-coached Utah team. That’s a pretty good foundation.
We won’t learn more about their long-term place in the Big Ten, nor will we get a clearer sense of internal expectations in Heritage Hall. This is a short-term answer to the eternal question: Can you survive the Utah steamroller?
If it can, USC would be on the fast track toward a spot in this year’s playoff, with a Nov. 19 date with UCLA, the only ranked opponent left on the schedule. If it can’t, the Trojans may need to reckon with the possibility that their aspirations are still only a speck on the horizon. No pressure.