Lincoln Riley addresses state of USC program: 'We're coming, we're coming quickly'

Lincoln Riley faced questions about his progress at USC and the state of the program coming off an 8-5 season.

Basically, USC fans expected Riley to compete for national titles right away after he came over from Oklahoma. In a way, the Trojans did in 2022 before struggling a bit last year.

Now going into Year 3, the expectations are great for USC’s entry into the Big Ten. But as Riley said, USC isn’t behind in the process, but he seemed to preach patience.

“It’s definitely not behind … we’ve won 19 (games the last two years),” Riley said at Big Ten Media Days. “It could never get there fast enough right? Especially the blue bloods … In the last nine years, whatever it’s been I’ve been in the blue one programs. I’ve kind of gotten a front row seat to what life is like, and so it can’t happen soon enough and we fight, scratch and claw every single day to get it to where it’s got to be. 

“There’s some things that we were able to amend quickly and get pretty competitive pretty quickly. There’s also some things that take time that no matter how hard you try, what you do … you can’t revamp a roster and all the freshman classes and you know, stacking those classes like you can’t do four years worth of work in a year.”

Make no mistake, Riley is ready to get USC back in the national title picture in this era of college football. Could it be this year? Maybe.

Riley definitely took a page out of Deion Sanders’ catchphrase book though.

“You can’t build a brand new facility in a year and get it all planned and designed and move heaven and earth like we did to get it done,” Riley said. “I mean like this, all this stuff takes time. And so I think we’ve made progress in every way that you can possibly measure. I think people that were around the program before have a greater respect for that probably than the ones that just see USC out from a distance. But we’re coming, we’re coming quickly.”

Still, any team, specifically one with a spotlight like USC, can keep up in this day and age with the right capital behind it. The competition better hope that day never comes for the Trojans either according to Riley.

“When we catch up? And we are going to catch up. That’s when the things that this place has that others don’t shows up,” Riley said. “It’s coming.”