Lincoln Riley faces an exam he should be able to pass | Opinion

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USC's game at Penn State is not the greatest matchup of all time. It's not the sexiest matchup of the 2026 college football season. It won't even decide the Big Ten championship. In the bigger national picture, it's not that big a game. Yet, in terms of the drama of competition and the way results affect reputations and the careers attached to them, Trojans–Nittany Lions is a massive game. It's also a classic test for Lincoln Riley.

Facing familiar coaches

With his job on the line, Lincoln Riley is facing a former colleague and the man who could have come to Los Angeles in instead of him in 2021. He is facing his former defensive coordinator at USC, D'Anton Lynn, and the man who could have become the Trojans' head coach in 2021, Matt Campbell. Riley versus Campbell is also a renewal of a coaching matchup for Riley from his Big 12 days at Oklahoma. He locked horns with Campbell many times when the latter was at Iowa State.

Big Ten road game

Riley is facing his foremost demon at USC: a Big Ten road game. Riley has not been able to pass these tests, and when we say "tests," we aren't even thinking about graduate school exams. These are ordinary mid-semester exams on a random Wednesday in English 102. Riley hasn't even been able to pass those.

This Penn State team isn't special

Playing Penn State on the road at night isn't a piece of cake, but this is not a great Penn State team. It isn't even a very good team. It's a struggling team with a lot of injuries, including its best wide receiver, Koby Howard. This is a team in transition under a first-year head coach who scrambled to assemble his roster by basically importing his previous team (Iowa State) to his new school.

2025 Iowa State is 2026 Penn State

That 2025 Iowa State team wasn't especially good. USC is not playing one of Joe Paterno's elite Penn State squads. USC isn't playing Saquon Barkley and Trace McSorley from the 2016 PSU team which took a 14-point lead over the Trojans in the 2017 Rose Bowl before Sam Darnold led an epic rally.

Scale of 1 to 10? This is a 4

This is why Saturday's game is such a defining one for Lincoln Riley: He isn't being asked to beat a great or even very good team. He is being asked to beat an ordinary team. On a scale of 1 to 10, this is a "5" at worst, very reasonably a 4 or even a 3. USC clearly has more talent than Penn State, especially at quarterback. Penn State's line play hasn't been good at all in recent weeks versus Wisconsin and Northwestern. USC should win.

Winning when you should win is not automatic for Lincoln Riley

And that's the point. Lincoln Riley, when on the road in the Big Ten, doesn't consistently win the games he should win. This is the latest non-graduate-school exam Riley should be able to pass.

Yet, we remember the losses at Maryland and Minnesota. We remember the loss at Illinois and the one at Michigan, too. None of those were great teams. USC couldn't beat any of them. The Trojans made enough mistakes to find a way to lose.

No more second chances

Can Lincoln Riley finally pass the kind of test which isn't the hardest possible exam in the world? Can he finally get his USC team to play a clean and relatively complete 60-minute game in the Eastern time zone? We don't have any previous examples of this. Can we see it just once? If Riley can ace this test, maybe there's still a small shred of hope for him.

If he can't, we will fully and finally know – with absolute certainty and zero doubt – that he is not the man to lead USC football in 2027 or any other future year.

The right answers or the wrong outcome

It's time for Lincoln Riley to pass a not-that-difficult exam. This isn't Penn State's 1982 or 1986 national championship team. This is a messy Matt Campbell squad searching for answers. If this becomes Penn State's get-right game, we will know Lincoln Riley is the wrong answer for USC, now and forever.

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This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Lincoln Riley faces an exam he should be able to pass | Opinion

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