George Kliavkoff opens up on the impact of Lincoln Riley on the Pac-12

USC made the splash hire of the offseason, pulling Lincoln Riley away from Oklahoma and into the Pac-12. A coaching move that sent shockwaves throughout the entirety of college football, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff thinks Riley will make a major impact on how the conference views football.

When somebody with the resume of Riley walks into a conference, other schools are going to have to respond. Four Big 12 championships, three College Football Playoff appearances, and an overall record of 55 wins and just 10 losses.

Kliavkoff recently spoke on Riley’s in a recent interview with The Athletic, saying he thinks the head coach’s addition will see Pac-12 schools invest more into football. He thinks the change has already begun with the transfer portal and eventually transition into the recruiting world.

“Lincoln Riley going to USC is one indication of a much broader strategy that I see across all 12 of our schools, which is an increased focus and investment in football,” Kliavkoff said. “The investment in football by all of us has had an immediate impact. I see more kids transferring to our schools — well-recognized, high-quality student-athletes.

“I see already and I think we’ll see more in the future us being able to hold on and retain the best West Coast graduates who, in the last decade or so, have been going to East Coast or Midwest schools. I see that slowing down and I see us being able to defend our territory with our best kids more so than we have in the past.”

In the College Football Playoff era, only two West Coast school has made an appearance in Oregon (2014) and Washington (2016). Utah has come close on a couple of occasions over the past few years but the Pac-12 has been quiet on the national stage for quite some time.

Riley will obviously be looking to get USC back to the levels everyone involved with the program expects but Kliavkoff is hoping the rest of the conference will wake up. Oregon has brought some SEC-spice in by hiring Dan Lanning away from Georgia, while the two Washington schools have new head coaches as well.

As Kliavkoff stated, recruiting has a big problem for Pac-12 schools as top Pacific/Mountain Time Zone recruits leave for other regions. People such as Riley are going to change that as he looks to lock down the area for USC alone. From there, other schools will have success as it becomes trendy to stay on the West Coast.