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RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — USC coach Lincoln Riley hasn’t led the Trojans to the College Football Playoff, but he still knows what a playoff team looks like.
He says he believes his team has all the ingredients to break through this coming season. Riley, who is 35-18 at USC after guiding Oklahoma to the CFP in each of his first four seasons as Sooners coach, said the expectations are clear for his fifth season with the Trojans.
“We have absolutely taken steps now,” Riley said in an interview with ESPN and CBS at the Big Ten spring meetings. “Honestly, now it’s just time to go do it. It’s time. The program’s ready for it.”
Riley noted the comments he made earlier in the offseason about USC’s championship window opening, despite three or more losses in each of his first four seasons. He’s not backing down.
“I caught some flack for saying … that I thought we had opened up a window, but it’s just true,” Riley said. “It’s how I feel. And I feel like I’ve got a little bit of credibility in terms of having been in part of some places that did that at a pretty high level.
“So I have at least a little bit of an idea of what I’m talking about.”
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Riley pointed to several reasons, including a roster with the type of depth along both lines that USC has lacked in the past. After USC “exceeded expectations,” according to Riley, and reached the Pac-12 championship game in his first season, the team made a push in the transfer portal to take the next step but “missed on some key guys,” Riley said. He added that the misses probably cost USC high school players it could have developed.
The team spent the past offseason focused on retention and finalizing the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class, which includes five top-35 players and 19 in the SC Next 300. Riley also hired Gary Patterson, whom he faced for years in the Big 12, as defensive coordinator, a move Riley said he had hoped to make several years ago.
USC is also set to move into its new on-campus football performance center this summer.
“I’ve told people, there was almost like a feeling when you first got here, you’re standing in front of a dam and there’s just leaks, and you plug one leak and another one pops,” Riley said. “It’s not perfect, but there’s not many leaks any more.”
USC will face a schedule that doesn’t include rival Notre Dame but does feature Ohio State, Oregon and Washington at home, and trips to both Indiana and Penn State. Riley says he thinks he and the program have grown to the point where they can navigate the gauntlet.
“The years here, going through all we’ve gone through, and the challenge here, the opportunity, it’s made me a lot better coach,” Riley said. “I’m a lot better coach than at any point during the years in Oklahoma. I’ve definitely learned and grown a lot, and there’s a lot of things that I’ve learned now that I wish I had known back then, or been better at.”
