Lincoln Riley arrived at USC with national-title expectations after going 55-10 at Oklahoma. Five seasons later, the Trojans are still waiting on their first College Football Playoff appearance under him, and patience is running thin. But FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt thinks pulling the plug now could be a much bigger mistake than USC realizes.
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The Trojans just escaped Washington with a 25-21 comeback win to move to 5-1, yet frustration around Riley has hardly disappeared after the blowout loss to Oregon and continued questions about the program’s culture. Klatt has pushed back on those firing calls both on FOX and on The Joel Klatt Show, but his strongest argument is financial.
“The crowd chanting ‘Fire Lincoln.’ I think that would be a rash decision,” Klatt said on The Joel Klatt Show. “If they fired Lincoln Riley, it would be a $70 million buyout plus his assistants. Let’s just call that round number $74, $75 million.”
And that is only where Klatt starts the math.
If the Trojans wanted a legitimate top-tier replacement, they would likely have to buy that coach out of his current contract too, then pay for an entirely new staff. Klatt’s point is that USC would not simply be paying Riley to leave. It would also be paying another program to let its coach go, then funding another expensive coaching operation from scratch.
Then comes the roster problem. A coaching change in the transfer-portal era can open the door for players to leave and for rival programs to start recruiting them immediately. Klatt specifically warned that coaches such as Dan Lanning, Ryan Day, Kirby Smart and Lane Kiffin would have an opportunity to come after USC’s best talent if Riley were fired.
So USC would also have to spend aggressively to retain its current players, replace anyone who leaves, and rebuild the roster around the next coach’s system. Once Riley’s estimated $70 million buyout, his assistants, the next coach’s buyout, a new staff and the cost of keeping an elite roster together are all added up, Klatt estimates the real price of making a change could land somewhere between $100 million and $120 million.
And even after spending that kind of money, USC would still be buying uncertainty. There is no guarantee the next coach would outperform Riley, keep the roster intact or get the Trojans any closer to a national championship.
The timing makes the gamble even bigger. USC has already poured a nine-figure investment into its football infrastructure, while the program has also assembled one of the strongest young talent groups in the country. Blowing everything up now would risk undoing years of recruiting and development just as those investments are supposed to start paying off.
That is ultimately Klatt’s argument. USC can be frustrated with Riley’s inconsistency, but firing him now would not be a simple coaching change. It could become a nine-figure reset with no guarantee that the program comes out better on the other side.