Paul Finebaum: Lincoln Riley 'looks like a loser,' Big Ten will 'eat him up' 

ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum believes Lincoln Riley is in for a rude awakening as he leads USC into the Big Ten. Finebaum said Monday morning on First Take that Riley is trending down quickly, with no sign of coming back up.

“I think he has an enormous amount to prove, because quite frankly, I think he’s been a disaster,” Finebaum said.

Lincoln Riley is entering his third season as the head at USC, after previously spending five seasons as the head coach at Oklahoma.

He left to take over the Trojans program ahead of the 2022 season after it was revealed that Oklahoma was joining the SEC. Finebaum feels that Riley was scared of the competition in the SEC.

“He ran away,” Finebaum said. “He did not want to deal with the Southeastern Conference at OU. He took what he saw was an easier course, so he goes out to Southern Cal. He takes Caleb Williams. Good first year, but since then everything has gone wrong. I thought last year was one of the worst coaching jobs I’ve ever seen.”

USC went 11-3 in Year 1 under Lincoln Riley, before falling to 8-5 last year. Finebaum believes the Trojans will take another step back in 2024 with Caleb Williams now gone.

“Quite frankly, had I been the Athletics Director at Southern Cal, I would’ve fired Lincoln Riley because he’s yet to show, after many years as a head coach, that he knows anything about defense,” Finebaum said. “He’s gone through defensive coordinators. He just simply couldn’t handle it. And now things are going to be five times worse in the Big Ten.

“With Oregon and Washington going to the Big Ten, that’s the worst thing that could’ve happened to Lincoln Riley. … He’s not going to the playoffs and he’s not going to survive Southern California. The Big Ten is going to eat him up.”

Finebaum added that he expects Riley to struggle at USC in 2024, before going on to be an offensive coordinator in the NFL. Any shot he had at being an elite college football head coach is now gone, per Finebaum.

“I look at Lincoln Riley in totality, and quite frankly I think he’s a fraudulent elite coach. He’s not an elite coach. He lived off of Bob Stoops’ players at Oklahoma. He mastered the transfer portal, taking walk-ons as transfers and making them Heisman trophy candidates, but there’s so much more to college football than offense and he’s never been able to get it,” Finebaum said. “The one thing LA hates is a loser, and right now, I think Lincoln Riley looks like a loser.”