College football analyst contrasts Lincoln Riley with Bobby Bowden

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Lincoln Riley hasn’t won as much at USC as he did at Oklahoma. College football analysts have downgraded their assessments of Riley as a result. However, another college football analyst is thinking of Riley less for his win-loss record, and more for his scheduling habits and inclinations. Mark Schipper of 5th Down CFB had this to say about Riley and Bowden after USC halted its series with Notre Dame:

“Bobby Bowden might be the greatest and most universally beloved coach in CFB history,” Schipper began. “He’s on the short list, anyway I think of Lincoln Riley as the anti-Bobby Bowden Bowden and Florida State played both Florida and Miami out-of-conference every single season, hell or high water, when Miami and Florida were two of the deadliest programs in CFB. Had multiple national title runs wrecked by each school. But Bowden and FSU won 2 national titles and will go down in history as maybe the most hard-assed, anyone-anytime program of all time. They kept stepping into the ring for championship bouts and, win or lose, marched off to the next one ready to brawl. Riley is a weak man, a soft competitor. That’s how he’ll be remembered.”

Bobby Bowden was certainly a coach who lived up to the idea of playing anyone, anywhere, anytime. Go look at his Florida State schedules from the late 1970s through the early 1990s when he built FSU into a national power. It is notable that Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman claimed the Irish would play anyone, anywhere, anytime, but did not live up to that stated ideal by backing out of the USC series because they weren’t getting the terms they wanted. They took their ball and went home, much as they did when they opted out of the bowl game.

Lincoln Riley is weak, and there’s no argument about that. Let’s just get this on the record: Notre Dame is weak, too … unlike Bobby Bowden.

This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: USC’s Lincoln Riley and Bobby Bowden are polar opposites, says analyst

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