Lincoln Riley’s $70 million price tag once looked like the one thing keeping USC from seriously considering a change. But losses keep piling up, the promised progress still has not arrived, and that massive buyout is starting to look less like protection and more like an expensive problem USC may eventually have to solve. Josh Pate now believes the situation has reached the point where money may no longer be enough to save Riley.
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Pate believes Riley is following a path similar to James Franklin’s at Penn State last year, pointing to an imminent coaching change at USC. Though the program hasn’t officially announced any news on firing Riley, the 41-27 loss to Oregon has led to a moment that could precede his removal from that position.
“They got beat by UCLA, they got beat by Northwestern. Franklin’s out of a job by October,” Pate said, according to an X post from ESPN College Football. “The impact of that was more than one loss because of how much had been invested from an emotional standpoint into the outcome of that game. If you talk to USC people, everything that applied to what I just said about Penn State last year applied to this last weekend’s game against Oregon.”
Pate argued that USC has given Riley the necessary resources to turn the program around. The Trojans have hired three defensive coordinators during Riley’s five-year tenure and have opened the $200 million Bloom Football Performance Center. The program also provided Riley with a front office designed to help with personnel and roster management as USC entered 2026 with the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class. And on Saturday, a crowd of 75,500 showed up for the Oregon game after USC faced criticism for lower season-opening attendance.
In the Oregon game, the Trojans tied the game at 27 in the fourth quarter, with the energy of the home crowd that Riley himself called the loudest he had heard since he worked as head coach with USC. However, the game slipped away as Oregon scored 14 unanswered points to turn a close contest into a two-touchdown loss.
Riley’s contract makes the decision on his future with USC more complicated, with his $70M buyout to become even more expensive if he remains under contract through 2031. USC could still afford the payout if its boosters are willing to help cover it. However, even for a well-funded school, paying to move on from a coach and to hire a new one is a major expense.
“Put yourself in their position,” Pate said. “They do all that, and then the other guy [The Ducks] is missing his starting quarterback and the backup still beats us by double digits. We’re out. That’s the collective attitude there. He will not get that thing back. That’ll be it for Lincoln Riley at USC.”
Pate believes Oregon’s loss could be the moment that changes everything for Riley, much like Penn State’s loss to Oregon last season, which became a turning point for James Franklin. USC has spent the offseason building expectations around Riley, and the Trojans expected a win as they packed the Coliseum, which could have eventually turned a new page for the program. But USC lost 41-27 at home, even after Oregon lost their starting quarterback, Dante Moore.
Lincoln Riley responds to USC’s growing concerns after Oregon loss
With the noise growing louder after every matchup, Riley has had to answer for where his program stands and whether he’s still the right man to lead it. Riley pushed back on the idea that everything is falling apart, pointing to the silver lining in the loss against Oregon.
“Just by winning,” Riley said, according to Jordan Mendoza of USA Today. “Look, we didn’t get run out of the stadium. There’s a lot of good things on that tape. There’s a lot of young guys making a lot of plays. There is a lot of good on that tape. You don’t have a chance to win a game like that if you don’t do some things pretty well. So we got to capitalize on those, and we got to attack the areas we got to be better at.”
For Riley, his confidence in the program will be tested more when USC faces Washington, Penn State, Ohio State and Indiana next in the schedule. Whether Riley can turn things around or ends up leaving USC, as Pate believes, could depend on how the Trojans perform in the big games ahead.