Lincoln Riley addresses future of Notre Dame series: 'We don't want to be in this position'

As talk of the future of the series between Notre Dame and USC remains ongoing, Lincoln Riley‘s position is becoming a little more clear. He’d like to play the Fighting Irish, but he doesn’t want to do so if it’s going to jeopardize the Trojans’ chances to reach the College Football Playoff on an annual basis.

There’s a few ways to look at that. First, the current system dictates things a little bit.

To Riley, nuance of how a schedule is built is ignored in many playoff discussions. So having a tougher schedule by playing Notre Dame isn’t necessarily taken into full consideration.

“No question it should. It’s just at the end of the day, are you going to have a human that’s going to sit there and is going to put in whatever, a 9-3 team over an 11-1 team?” Riley said on ESPN LA. “Like it’s just, recent history says that’s not going to do it. We can go through all these factors — strength of schedule and points and points allowed and all this — but at the end of the day the No. 1 thing that everybody sees is record. And as a human you can always fall back on, ‘Well, this team won 11 and this team won nine.'”

Riley broke down exactly what could save the future of the series with Notre Dame. Simply put, more defined access to the playoff with a little less subjectivity would do the trick.

As things currently stand, Riley doesn’t even blame the selection committee for trying to sort through the variety in schedules to determine who should be in. It’s just too difficult.

“It’s an impossible position to put these people in, and that’s why we’ve all been such an advocate to get more automatic qualifying spots,” Riley said. “Let these conferences decide it however they want to decide it and then be one of the best teams in your conference and go represent your conference in the playoff. And then it does preserve, it doesn’t put us in a tough position like we are right now. We don’t want to be in this position trying to figure out the Notre Dame thing either.”

As if to further emphasize his point on the path to the playoff potentially being the determining factor in the series’ future, Riley discussed how much he enjoys playing Notre Dame. He doesn’t want to see the rivalry disappear.

When it comes down to it, though, he wants USC’s best interests protected. And in his estimation, that’s hard to do while playing Notre Dame in the current format.

“Shoot, (athletics director) Jen (Cohen) and I, again, part of the reason we both came here, I said at media day, was to play in games like that and to coach in games like that,” Riley said. “This is our life, like we love this more, as much as all the fans love it, we actually love it more. We really do.

“But it is, it’s a unique position to be in because you feel loyal to the history and to all of that and you also feel loyalty to USC and doing the best thing we can to help us win national championships. So hopefully that’s a position that we don’t get put in.”