Musings from Arledge: Relief it's Over and Lincoln Riley's Remodel of the Trojans
In a column that can always be more than a little self-indulgent, I start today with a couple of personal anecdotes.
My sophomore year of high school was my first year practicing with the varsity team. It was intimidating. The players were older and bigger. Things moved faster. And worst of all, the defensive coordinator was very intense and responsible for end-of-practice conditioning. On Mondays, we would close with 100-yard sprints. At that point in my life, I was not accustomed to working so hard, and those sprints ruined my Mondays. I would be thinking about them during class, thinking about them all through practice. I dreaded them.
But what I most remember is the feeling when we finished. The feeling of relief. The joy that I wouldn’t have to do that anymore.
That’s how I feel about the end of this season. I’ve loved USC football since I was a kid. I spent most of my adult life planning around the USC football schedule. Those Saturdays – and bowl days! – were sacrosanct. Nothing and nobody was allowed to interfere. Never before has watching a USC football game been a chore. This season was horrific – for me, the worst of the last 40 years. I’m just so relieved it’s finally over.
So I don’t want to talk about the Cal game, except for two points. The first is that it was good to see the young guys play. Some of these guys have a future in a better-coached, more-disciplined program.
My second personal anecdote comes from my senior year in college. That season was a disaster. I got hurt in the middle of the season and missed three games, and when I came back, I wasn’t close to 100%. And our team was terrible, the worst in school history at that time.
Going into our final game, we had one win and were playing probably the best team in the conference, a team led by a Florida State transfer who was setting rushing records at the small-college level. And I had never been more pumped to play a football game. Nobody had to beg me to practice hard and play that game. I loved playing football. It meant way more to me than it should have, probably, especially in light of how my desire and ambition far outstripped my talent.
I’m not going to call out the guys who refused to play this week. I don’t know them, and I don’t know their individual situations. Obviously, many players who are expected to be high draft choices have started skipping bowl games. I don’t like that, but I suppose I understand the business decision. Certainly, I understand not risking serious injury in a game where the stakes are so low. I can’t comment on any individual’s choice. I can only say this: I can’t imagine skipping my last college game. I can’t imagine not playing with the guys that were my friends and teammates for so many years, the guys I had spent so many hours with in the weight room and on the field, the guys that I would celebrate with in the good times and commiserate with in the (more frequent) bad times. And I would have a hard time respecting one of my teammates if they had quit before the year is over, unless they had a very compelling reason for it.
I suspect there are some USC players who feel the same way. I’ll just leave it at that.
In the late 1930’s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ruthlessly purged the upper tier of Soviet society. A majority of high-ranking party officials, Red Army officers, and even secret police officers were sent to gulags or killed. Stalin’s motive in the Great Purge is still something of a mystery, and it certainly would have been to those who were at risk – that being everybody of any importance in Soviet society. Nobody knew what might put them on the next list of victims. And that made people a little bit crazy.
At the 1937 communist party conference, a terrified audience cheered Stalin with all they had, fearful that the first one to stop would be imprisoned or even killed. The great dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the scene that day:
“The applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly…Nine minutes! Ten!…Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers.”
Finally, after 11 minutes of nonstop enthusiastic applause, the boldest of the group – the director of a paper factory – sat down. Once he did, the entire room also stopped clapping and sat down. That night, the director was arrested and sent to prison for ten years. In his interrogation he was told the obvious: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”
Lincoln Riley is probably a nice guy. He certainly looks like one, with his slight frame and his baby face. Luke Fickell looks like a guy who could inspire fear. But Lincoln Riley? Nah. All the same, I suspect there are a lot of people around Troy right now that are wondering whether they can afford to stop clapping … because the college football equivalent of the Great Purge is coming.
There are two fundamental problems with USC football right now. The first is the lack of top-shelf talent on the roster. Yes, USC has some guys with great potential, Jaxson Dart being the most obvious example. But on the whole, the players USC suits up on Saturdays do not look like, run like, or hit like the guys that Alabama and Georgia are putting on the field. The second fundamental problem is a defective program culture. USC’s football leadership for many years now has been second rate (eighth rate?) and has not instilled the work ethic, discipline, or desire that the great programs have. The culture that Pete Carroll built is long dead.
Both of these problems have the same solution: new personnel. Lincoln Riley did not walk away from one of the best jobs in college football, a job that he could have kept for the next decade or more, so he could fail at USC and get fired. He looks easy-going and non-threatening. But Lincoln Riley is about to be ruthless in revamping USC’s roster and coaching staff. He has to be. Can he really afford to stake his future on this group of coaches who delivered what may be the worst team in modern USC history? Can he entrust his career to a group of players who let Oregon State and a three-win Stanford stomp them on the Coliseum floor this year, a group that we can’t be sure was even committed to finishing the season?
The coming purge is going to devastate the coaching staff as well. The coordinators obviously have to go. No coach worth anything could really consider keeping Todd Orlando and Graham Harrell in their positions. As for position coaches, there may be some good coaches in that group. But can you really blame Lincoln Riley if he chooses simply to clean house? I think he may have decided to rip out the flooring, paint all the walls, and clean out anything that even resembles the house owned by the last guy. I don’t blame him.
This possibility has led to much hand-wringing with some Trojans about the fate of Donte Williams. Not me. Donte will land on his feet somewhere. And I won’t blame Donte for the program he was a part of. Any program run by Clay Helton for this long is screwed. At the same time, Donte has done nothing this year to make his presence look indispensable. His corners have been a disaster, and he has been completely unable to motivate this roster to play hard or, in some cases, to play at all. Donte Williams may be a great coach, but there’s not much evidence of that. He’s replaceable. They all are. And if Washington decides to make Donte Williams its defensive coordinator because they like him as a recruiter, I suspect the new Huskies coach is making the same mistake that Clay Helton made when he promoted a good recruiter to be his offensive coordinator, and he’ll likely suffer the same consequences.
If you’re worried about recruiting, don’t be. Lincoln Riley understands recruiting. He’ll be just fine, with or without Donte Williams.
Already, there is a great deal of excitement with recruits. USC is already landing guys who had given up on USC football as a dead, has-been program (which it was). Some of the reasons are obvious: in five years, Riley has four conference titles, three playoff appearances, two Heisman trophies (and a runner up).
I dug into the numbers just a little bit to see how Oklahoma under Riley compares to the other top programs in the country. The problem when looking at college football statistics is the small sample sizes; I’m not sure twelve to thirteen games a year is enough to provide statistically meaningful conclusions in some cases. So I focused on per-play statistics, where the data sets are huge. Specifically, I compared Oklahoma to Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and Georgia on yards-per-play differential and points-per-play differential, two of the best indicators of a football team’s dominance. Here are the numbers:
| Yards Per Play Differential | Points Per Play Differential |
| 2017 | |
| Bama 2.5 Ohio State 2.5 Oklahoma 2.4 Georgia 2.2 Clemson 1.2 | Bama .343 Georgia .304 Ohio State .280 Oklahoma .238 Clemson .192 |
| 2018 | |
| Clemson 3.1 Bama 2.7 Oklahoma 2.4 Georgia 1.9 Ohio State .9 | Clemson .415 Bama .386 Oklahoma .278 Georgia .239 Ohio State .164 |
| 2019 | |
| Bama 2.9 Ohio State 2.9 Clemson 2.7 Oklahoma 2.2 Georgia 1.7 | Bama .407 Ohio State .390 Clemson .386 Georgia .232 Oklahoma .149 |
| 2020 | |
| Bama 2.8 Clemson 1.6 Oklahoma 1.5 Georgia 1.4 Ohio State 1.4 | Bama .418 Oklahoma .255 Clemson .233 Ohio State .193 Georgia .171 |
| 2021 | |
| Georgia 3.3 Ohio State 2.6 Bama 2.0 Oklahoma .7 Clemson .7 | Georgia .523 Ohio State .345 Bama .241 Clemson .137 Oklahoma .134 |
| Cumulative Ranking in All Categories | |
| Bama 1.6 Clemson 3.1 Ohio State 3.1 Georgia 3.4 Oklahoma 3.6 |
What you see from these numbers is, first, that Alabama really is in a class of its own. We got a pretty vivid reminder of that this weekend. The other programs have been great and have had years when they were better than Alabama. But if you’re looking for consistent dominance, Saban’s program is clearly superior.
After that, the other four top programs are in a pretty tight cluster. Oklahoma ranks fifth, but not by much. Lincoln Riley’s OU program was statistically competitive with Clemson, OSU, and Georgia.
There are two big knocks against Riley. The first is that Riley’s OU teams did not play defense well enough. I think that’s true, and it’s something to watch going forward. I also think it’s the reason Riley came to USC. More on that in a second.
The second knock is that Riley has never won a playoff game. This is a concern, but I’m willing to extend some grace in light of the teams OU was playing in those games. OU was the least-talented team in all three. Two of the three teams that beat OU are all-time greats.
And I think Riley’s shocking move to USC comes down to this: at USC, he will have an easier path to the playoff than he would in the SEC West, and – this is critical – he will have a chance to put together a better roster. Riley referenced this in his introductory press conference. Dominating the entire west coast is far better than being one very strong player among many recruiting Texas. Texas may have more talent overall. But Texas is divided up between four powers all within a short drive – OU, Texas, Texas A&M, and LSU – and the entire rest of the SEC. USC, when it’s strong, has the west coast all to itself.
And while Riley will need to go outside of California to supplement the offensive and defensive lines, he’s a guy who has been poaching top recruits from California and Florida for years. He knows how to talk a kid into traveling thousands of miles to play football.
If Riley’s plan works, he will have a better roster at USC than he ever had at OU. At OU, Riley was recruiting consistently in the 5-8 range. At USC, he can recruit in the top three. That matters. Recruit the way Pete Carroll recruited, and you’ll have the talent to match up with Clemson, Ohio State and, yes, Alabama in those big games. That’s what Lincoln Riley wants, and I know that’s what Trojan fans like us have wanted for quite some time.
Did anybody watch Kyle Whittingham go Lieutenant Aldo Raine on Oregon for the second time in just a few weeks? “Each and every man under my command owes me 100 Duck scalps! And I want my scalps!”
Some solid belly laughs in that one – my ribs still hurt – and maybe the best comedy sequel since the second Naked Gun. Oregon’s house-of-cards football program can’t collapse fast enough for me.
Hey, Mario, can I have a word? Take that Miami job. I’m not worried about you sticking around at Oregon. Your recruiting success will dry up now that USC has decided to fix its program. I’m just worried about you. Oregon is a second-rate program, and it will never be better than that. Go home. You’re an average coach but an amazing recruiter. If you want to win, you need to out-talent your opponent. You’re not going to do that at Oregon. USC will start bludgeoning you within the next year or two, and you can never compete with the more-established powers if you stay in hippy country. Go take over a program that can recruit the best talent in the country. When The U is doing it right, it pulls in future Pro Bowlers by the bucket-full, all of them a short Uber from campus. Take the Miami job, land a bunch of future NFL Hall of Famers, and you might be able to play a competitive game against Kyle Whittingham’s scrappy three stars. Good luck.
Hey, OU! I know it sucks to lose your coach to another program. It’s humiliating. Like Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer, you’re wondering why Lincoln Riley couldn’t have told you how he felt about the OU gig yesterday! And it probably hurts to see all of these So Cal kids decide to stay home now that Son of O-Line Coach™ is breaking hearts and ruining careers in the deep south. You’re going to need to come to terms with that, however. It’s a lot harder to pull top-shelf talent out of Orange County now that USC has decided to stop self-destructing like Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.
So you’re upset. I get it. I’m almost sympathetic. But in light of your secret negotiations with the SEC and bombshell announcement that left your Big 12 colleagues without a real conference and without any notice, your whining about a lack of loyalty and insufficient notice isn’t a very good look. You and Texas did as much as anybody to help make college football what it is today. You made your bed.
Never bet against Nick Saban.
