CFB Rumors: Insider Reveals ‘First Call’ USC Trojans AD Would Make to Replace Lincoln Riley
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USC Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley finds himself squarely on the college football coaching hot seat in October. Coming off another ugly loss to the Oregon Ducks and with the program’s College Football Playoff hopes fading, Riley’s future in Southern California seems bleak.
The biggest obstacle right now that creates uncertainty over a firing is Riley’s buyout. USC would need to pay him $72 million, a figure that doesn’t even include money that would be owed to the next Trojans coaching staff and the costs of replacing them.
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However, for a storied program, the results on the field under Riley have been unacceptable and frustrations are growing among boosters and the fan base. If a turnaround doesn’t happen, firing Riley is on the table and it seems many around college football know who USC athletic director Jen Cohen would target first.
In his latest mailbag for The Athletic, Stewart Mandel wrote that it’s “long been assumed” that Cohen would first reach out to Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer to gauge his interest in replacing Riley.
“It’s long been assumed that athletic director Jen Cohen, who hired Kalen DeBoer at Washington before leaving in 2023, would place her first call to the now-Alabama coach. I’d posit that he has a better job where he is, but USC isn’t nearly the fishbowl it is at Alabama.”
Stewart Mandel on who the USC Trojans may target if Lincoln Riley is fired
While DeBoer is a South Carolina native, he’s spent a lot of time coaching on the West Coast. He served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Fresno State (2017-18) before becoming the program’s head coach (2020-21) and then landing the top job with the Washington Huskies.
It was Cohen who hired DeBoer to turn around the Huskies’ football team after the disastrous Jimmy Lake era. While she left in August 2023 to become USC’s athletic director, her hand-picked hire got the Huskies to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game the very next season.
DeBoer took on the challenge of being the first coach to succeed Nick Saban at Alabama. The team posted consecutive four-loss seasons, the first time that happened in Tuscaloosa since 2006-07.
Coaching the Crimson Tide comes with a level of pressure and expectations that are practically unrivaled across the country. It’s why some wondered if DeBoer might have interest in the Penn State Nittany Lions’ coaching job after James Franklin was fired.
Returning to the West Coast and taking over a program that’s desperate just to get back to the College Football Playoff might be appealing to DeBoer, especially since his family could live in California and be subject to less hostility from fans if the team falls short of expectations.
However, that would require USC to cover his $10 million buyout at Alabama and that is if they came out on top of a bidding war with the Crimson Tide with an average annual salary that would top $13 million. Given all of that and the possibility that DeBoer wants to stick around with breakout quarterback Keelon Russell, Cohen and the Trojans would likely need to look elsewhere.
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