Lincoln Riley on state of college football: 'We're stuck in between an amateur and a professional model'

College football is going through extensive changes. That includes things like NIL and the Transfer Portal that are changing how rosters are constructed across the country, which is a problem for coaches like Lincoln Riley.

The USC Trojans head coach made an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. There, Riley explained that a major challenge college sports are facing right now is existing somewhere between amateurism and professionalism.

“The problem is right now we’re stuck in between an amateur and a professional model,” Lincoln Riley said. “Anytime you’re stuck between two different things, it’s gonna cause problems. It’s gonna cause issues, and that’s what’s happened.”

Lincoln Riley played at Texas Tech where he started coaching in 2003. Since then, he’s spent his entire adult life working as a coach at the college level and he still loves the game. In fact, he believes the game itself is as good as it has ever been.

“Now, the game is still phenomenal. The product on Saturdays is as good as it’s ever been and I do believe in college football. I do believe it’s gonna get fixed. We do have some problems right now that make it very difficult for coaches, players, administrators, everyone, and we’ve caused a lot of these problems, but I do believe there’s a solution there and the game is way too good to let something like this mess it up,” Riley said.

“So, it’s my hope that we get it fixed. It needs to get fixed because there’s no successful business, whether you’re talking about the NFL or any other business out there that has nothing to do with sports like you can’t run this way and sustain it and we’ve got to fix it.”

Lincoln Riley addresses USC’s defensive improvements, staff changes

Within USC, Lincoln Riley has worked to improve the defense. Those are changes that he also addressed on The Pat McAfee Show.

“Certainly, you’ve got to play elite-level defense to get it done. We haven’t done that in the first two years here. I don’t hide from that, but I also don’t hide from the fact that the defensive staff that we just brought in here, I think, is second to none anywhere,” Riley said.

“We started with a bunch of names on the board that we thought were some of the best coaches and best developers in football. For some of these guys to leave some of the situations that they were in to come coach for us here at USC, I think speaks a lot to to the trajectory that they see this program on and what it can become. I think the staff is phenomenal and I can’t wait to get started with this group.”