USC football news: Lincoln Riley defiant as ever as calls mount for his firing
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USC fell to Oregon on Saturday, losing 41-27. Not only did the Trojans lose the game, but an incident involving Desman Stephens celebrating his dirty hit on Oregon quarterback Dante Moore has caused even more questions. Colin Cowherd has criticized the culture of the program under Lincoln Riley. Meanwhile, Paul Finebaum called for USC to fire Riley.
Now, Riley is firing back at the calls for his job, per Ben Bolch of The New York Post.
“The reality is, we go on the type of run that I think this team can have and have the type of stretch that we can, then ain’t nobody going to be talking about the end of that game,” Riley said. “I mean, that’s just the world outside, and I understand it, but our world inside’s a lot different than the world outside.”
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Riley has struggled to live up to the expectations that came with his hiring. He is just 39-19 as the head coach ofthe Trojans, has not made it to the College Football Playoff, and has played for just one conference title. That was a Pac-12 title in 2022, his first year. USC lost that game 47-24 to Utah.
Meanwhile, Riley has struggled against Top 25 opponents. With the loss to Oregon, USC is just 5-15 under Riley when facing a Top 25 opponent. The Trojans’ coach is trying to ignore the outside noise.
“At a place like SC, a place like Oklahoma, where I was at before, like, the one constant is the noise,” Riley said. “Like, there’s always noise. It’s just, what is the noise, right? Like, after you win games, the noise is typically over-positive and overblown and not accurate. And after you lose, it’s honestly, it’s the same way just on the other side of it. Like, the truth’s always in the middle. You know, the truth is on the tape.”
USC gets right back to work this week, hosting Washington before a contest on the road against Penn State. Then, they will have their first off-week of the season. Riley knows that the team needs to get results.
“Ultimately, you know, this is a results-driven business, we understand that,” Riley said. “Like, there’s no moral victories for us here, there never will be. So I’m proud of the way we fought, but we’ve just got to play a little bit better. We have a good football team and our ability to turn that over in terms of some of the plays that we didn’t make and opportunities that we missed and make our share of those will determine how far this team can go because we have a talented team, we have a really good football team but we’ve got to play better and we need to kind of start to hit our stride now.”
The Trojans are currently 4-1 on the year and still a Top 25 team. They will look to move to 5-1 when Washington comes to town on Saturday for a 7:30 pm ET kickoff.
Related: Ohio State coach Ryan Day takes snarky shot at Michigan after watching Iowa disaster unfold
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