Bruce Feldman believes Lincoln Riley has specific challenge with USC job

Lincoln Riley shook the college football world over the weekend, when the Oklahoma head coach — who made it to the College Football Playoff in three of the last four years at the helm — left the 10-2 Sooners in favor of USC, where he was named the Trojans’ head coach.

Riley moved to the west coast with plenty of rebuilding in store. USC has struggled in recent years, despite its history as one of the nation’s premier programs. The Trojans have not eclipsed eight wins since 2017, when they went 11-3, and their last season with 12 or more victories came in Pete Carroll’s penultimate season at the helm in 2008. With that in mind, FOX Sports reporter Bruce Feldman said that Riley’s biggest challenge in turning around the USC program will be timing. Feldman thinks that USC’s program is in such a poor state right now that it might take Riley more time than he’d like to get the wheels turning.

“It has nothing to do with Lincoln Riley. For FOX, I did the UCLA-USC game, so I was around the USC program for a couple of days and you’d look physically at them — I’ve lived out here for 20 years — this was the worst looking USC team on the hoof since I’ve been out here,” Feldman said. “It’s just very underwhelming. And, look, there’s reasons for that: when you’ve had basically a lame duck as head coach as Clay Helton has been for like three years, that undermines recruiting in a big way. And I think what’s also happened is the assistants — it’s no fault of the interim Donte Williams — I think that you had basically a lot of folks who feel like they’ve been independent contractors.”

Riley is taking over a USC program that is just 4-7 this season, marking one of the worst performances in quite some time. The last time USC finished a season with four or fewer wins was in 1991, when the Trojans went 3-8 under Larry Smith.

Helton’s firing followed USC’s Week 2 loss to Stanford, and the Trojans have won just three times since then against Washington STate, Colorado and Arizona. USC has underwhelmed in some of the biggest games on its schedule, falling handedly to the likes of in-state rival UCLA, 62-33, Notre Dame, 31-16 and Pac-12 Champion Utah, 42-26. It won’t be easy for Riley to turn things around, Feldman says.

“I think all those factors have conspired to a very, very average roster. I mean, I don’t really care what the star system says … a lot of those guys were probably overrated because they were committed to USC,” Feldman said. “What Lincoln Riley is inheriting is a roster that needs a massive upgrade.”