By Chris Camello (@chris-camello) & Nick Hamilton (@nickhamiltonla)
LOS ANGELES, CA – The USC Trojans might have finally gotten this one right. We haven’t said that often about the Trojans in their coaching hires since the iconic Pete Carroll left in 2009 with Clay Helton being the recent casualty after being fired in September.
It’s been one bad decision after another which has led to some really mediocre years for Trojans football with only mere glimpses of a successful season. It hasn’t just been a coaching carousel either; it’s been instability and controversy at the top spot with the athletic director position.
USC has spent the last few years cleaning house and not leaning on ex-Trojans to right the ship. One of the best things about AD Mike Bohn and his newest hire Lincoln Riley, surprisingly plucked directly from the University of Oklahoma, is they aren’t USC alumni but still understand how to build a winning program.
At the end of the day, isn’t winning all that matters?
The hiring of Riley has a chance to not only get USC out of the cellar of the conference but potentially get them back on map among the SEC elites like Alabama, Georgia, and LSU who have dominated college football in the last decade.
Even in the Pac-12, Oregon has been the team running the conference in recent years and building an appealing, dynamic culture that high school recruits (specifically from Southern California) are flocking to such as defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux.
Riley will hopefully cause a seismic shift in the conference to keep SoCal recruits in-house and not drifting north to Oregon or elsewhere.
We are already seeing evidence of that as Los Alamitos High School quarterback Malachi Nelson, a five-star recruit committed to Oklahoma, de-committed from the Sooners and will follow Riley to USC. Nelson will be one of many Riley recruits that will reconsider their futures and likely follow him to the land of Troy.
Building a winning culture will obviously take some time, but Riley has shown he can have success in a relatively short time. In his five years at Oklahoma, he had a 55-10 record winning four straight Big-12 Conference titles and going to the College Football Playoff in three of those five years.
He’s also built programs that are explosive offensively coaching two Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks in Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray. Even Jalen Hurts had success under Riley as Oklahoma’s fifth Heisman Trophy finalist and all three are starters in the NFL now. Hopefully, he can also get the defense on track as well which has struggled this year.
Getting the Trojans’ offense rolling again will help get the fans piling back into the Coliseum. During their rivalry game against UCLA, the stadium didn’t even appear to be half-full showing how low USC football has sunk in recent years while also getting blown out by the Bruins 62-33.
Riley is hoping to change all of that. Maybe he can’t propel them to the College Football Playoff right away. However, if he’s able to beat UCLA, Notre Dame, and secure a Pac-12 South title while potentially defeating a Pac-12 North opponent in the conference championship game, that’s a very impressive start and would make people believe USC football is back.
The road to success won’t be easy, but USC has the right man for the job as Bohn, and the Trojans alumni might have finally made the best decision to get this program back on a winning track where fans are proud to chant “Fight On!” again.
