USC agrees to phrases with Lincoln Riley to mentor Trojans

A person of the top rated coaches in college football is on his way to L.A.

USC is closing its three-month search for a new head football mentor with a bombshell hire, landing Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley to turn all over the Trojans software.

USC admirers have been ready for decades for the college to convey in a coach that can restore its treasured soccer software to glory. In Riley, it now has a coveted coach deemed among the most modern minds in football, a person who has previously established able of leading a prestigious plan to the College or university Football Playoff semifinals.

Riley has agreed to terms and will be the 30th head coach of the Trojans, ending a research characterized by its tranquil with a increase that will be felt throughout college football, a resource with understanding of the research not authorized to speak publicly about it explained to The Los Angeles Periods.

USC formally declared the employ the service of at about 5 p.m. Sunday.

The concern lingered for 3 months: Would USC athletic director Mike Bohn consider advantage of the very long runway he attained by firing Clay Helton Sept. 13 and land a mentor that could immediately rally the Trojan legions?

Even as other big jobs came open up at Louisiana State and Florida and schools scrambled to hand out major-dollars extensions to keep coaches in position, Bohn has presented a resounding response by luring Riley to Los Angeles.

“We are ecstatic to announce Lincoln Riley as our new head coach and welcome his wife, Caitlin, and their daughters, Sloan and Stella, to the Trojan Family members,” Bohn explained in a news release. “Lincoln is the rarest mixture of incredible individual and elite soccer coach. His successes and offensive accolades as a head mentor the earlier 5 years are astonishing. Lincoln will recruit relentlessly, produce his gamers on and off the discipline, and put into action a strong lifestyle in which the system will function with the optimum amount of integrity and professionalism.”

Riley will immediately take about working the USC football system, with Bob Stoops to mentor the Sooners in their bowl video game. Donte Williams will continue being the Trojans’ interim head coach for Saturday’s sport at California.

“He is identified for caring about the advancement and character of his players and winning at the optimum level,” USC President Carol Folt explained in a news launch. “Mike Bohn and I share a eyesight for the upcoming of USC athletics and using the services of Mentor Riley is a big assertion about wherever we are going as a system.”

Riley highlighted the opportunities that lie ahead for him primary the USC system.

“USC has an unparalleled soccer tradition with large methods and amenities, and the administration has manufactured a deep dedication to profitable. I seem forward to honoring that thriving custom and constructing on it,” Riley reported in a information launch. “The pieces are in position for us to create the application back to in which it should really be and the supporters anticipate it to be. We will get the job done challenging to build a physical soccer staff that is dominant on both lines of scrimmage, and has a dynamic balanced offense and a stout aggressive protection.

“I want to thank the administration, coaches and gamers at Oklahoma for 5 amazing years as their head coach. We achieved some excellent matters there and I will always cherish my time as a Quicker.”

Of the other coaches joined to USC’s research, from Cincinnati’s Luke Fickell to Baylor’s Dave Aranda to Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, none offers a resume very like Riley, who led Oklahoma to the College or university Soccer Playoff in each individual of his 1st a few seasons as coach. He hasn’t looked back again because, successful 55 games and four consecutive Significant 12 championships as the Sooners mentor, while finishing no lower than seventh in the polls in any of his 5 seasons.

In that quick time, Riley has demonstrated himself as college or university football’s preeminent quarterback guru. His initially two quarterbacks at Oklahoma, Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray, each gained the Heisman Trophy ahead of getting picked No. 1 overall. The Sooners subsequent quarterback, Jalen Hurts, was a Heisman finalist. All a few are now starting off NFL quarterbacks.

That track record ought to provide him effectively in Southern California, in which the landscape is replete with leading quarterback recruits, several of whom Riley previously plucked out from below USC.

His instant accomplishment, virtually unmatched in university soccer, made Riley 1 of the most coveted coaches not just in the college or university ranks, but the NFL as very well. Even though, even though his name was floated for several years at the best of hot boards and coaching candidate lists, Riley stood pat with the Sooners.

It appeared that would be the circumstance once again this time after Riley denied Saturday night time in the wake of Oklahoma’s season-ending defeat that he would go away Oklahoma for LSU.

But just as Oklahoma prepares to go away for the Southeastern Conference, where the competitiveness for playoff bids was certain to get a lot more intense, USC swooped in fewer than a single working day later on, pulling a offer together in a matter of hours that could define the way of its football method for the subsequent ten years.

The Trojans have not appeared in a Faculty Soccer Playoff in its 8 several years of existence and have received just 1 Pac-12 title considering the fact that 2008 when the Pete Carroll period was however going potent.

It applied to be a promise that USC, with its abundant riches to choose from across the Southland, would compile a leading-five recruiting course. But it has not finished so due to the fact 2018, the most obvious indicator that the program experienced dropped status beneath Helton.

Riley is the first hire that USC has built considering the fact that Carroll who is nationally suitable on his personal merit. Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian ended up Carroll proteges who were being introduced again to hold the very good moments rolling just after the NCAA handed the plan enormous sanctions in 2010 due to the fact of the Reggie Bush scandal. Helton, employed as an assistant by Kiffin, had hardly ever been a head coach when he was promoted to the permanent function by then-athletic director Pat Haden in 2015.

Bohn, after determining to maintain Helton in put right after the 2019 and 2020 seasons, fired Helton following USC was beaten soundly by Stanford 42-28 at the Coliseum in the 2nd activity of the calendar year. His ultimate record with the Trojans was 46-24.

Helton has due to the fact been employed to direct Ga Southern, even though USC leaders patiently waited for their prospect to land Riley.