As the college football world recently saw one big coach getting fired after another, including Penn State’s James Franklin and Florida’s Billy Napier, many fans thought that Lincoln Riley might be next to say goodbye to the USC Trojans.
While Riley had an impressive start in his first year with the Trojans in 2022-23, as the program made it to the Pac-12 championship game and finished the season with an overall 11-3 record, fans had higher hopes for the new head coach.
However, the Trojans have yet to showcase that level of standard since then and have struggled to make an impact in the last couple of years, including during the 2025 college football season, where they have a record of 5-2 so far.
Despite some fans’ pleas to fire Riley, Urban Meyer doesn’t believe it to be a realistic option for the Trojans due to the massive buyout amount mentioned in Riley’s contract.
“All right, You make a decision, you go back in your office. You have a Rolodex on your phone now; it used to be a Rolodex. Do you start calling the Bs, the billionaires, or the hundreds of millionaires, and say, ‘All right, here we go, I’m going to make a decision. I need a check for $20 (million),'” Meyer said at 11:00 (via The Triple Option).
“Is that? I don’t know this. I’m trying to think, what in the hell do you do? I need $70 million, there’s not a line item on the… you know, there’s budgets. You’ve got revenue and you’ve got expenses, and I think that’s economics 101. When there’s a line item that doesn’t show up and all the sudden it’s got a bunch of zeros behind it, eight figures behind it, is that a phone call to a person? Here’s the phone call, we have to make this change,” he added.
Analysts Lose Faith in Lincoln Riley Post Notre Dame Loss
Last week, Notre Dame defeated USC 34-24. Colin Cowherd and Joel Klatt sat together on Wednesday on “The Herd” show to discuss Lincoln Riley’s run at USC.
Cowherd said that while Riley is an amazing play designer and caller, he questioned how many years he has to watch USC get pushed around in every road game before his opinion changes.
He added that while Riley is a great intellect, he is not a culture builder, and watching USC get pushed around by teams like Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, and this year by Notre Dame, is tough.
Joel Klatt responded by highlighting that Notre Dame is just elite at running the ball, which is where Illinois exposed USC. However, he believes the Trojans will be better on the defensive line in the next college football season.
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