Lincoln Riley on expectations at USC: 'To win the championship'

Lincoln Riley is entering his first season as the head coach of the USC Trojans and expectations have been sky-high for him ever since he reeled in the nation’s most coveted prospects from the transfer portal in former Oklahoma quarterback Caleb Williams and the 2021 Biletnikoff Award winner, Jordan Addison.

Once Riley left Oklahoma and signed on with the Trojans for $110 million, he automatically knew that winning national championships would be the standard. For that kind of money, anything less would be considered a disappointment. He recently spoke about the sky-high expectations for the Trojans’ program and he doesn’t seem bothered by them one bit.

“Not my place to say whether they’re fair or not. Like I said in my opening press conference, before even one of these players had come in, I mean, you don’t come to USC and you don’t come to Los Angeles to do things small. You got to set your sights big. I don’t think it’s too much. I don’t. I believe in what we’re doing. I believe in what we’re teaching. I believe in the people that we have in there,” Riley said.

He also spoke about how he’s committed to the program for the long haul and that championships will always be the expectation as long as he’s the head honcho for the Trojans. “Obviously it’s going to continue to evolve through years. I didn’t come here for one season. I didn’t come here to do this in a short-term. In some respects you keep the long game in mind. The people we brought in here, the staff we brought in here, we didn’t come here to play for second. We are not wired that way. We came here competitively to win championships, win them now and to win them for a long time. That will always be our expectation,” Riley said.

Luckily for Riley, he’ll have one of the nation’s top quarterback-wide receiver combinations running his offense with Caleb Williams and Jordan Addison expected to put up spectacular numbers.

Returning to a top 10 teams in college football is a tangible goal for the Trojans under Riley. And it’s one they’ll likely achieve very soon. But winning national championships in college football never comes easy. Just ask Georgia head coach Kirby Smart. While Nick Saban is still the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, college football national championships have to go through him and the mighty Alabama football dynasty.

The USC Trojans kick off their 2022-2023 campaign against the Rice Owls on Saturday, Sept. 3. The game will be played in Los Angeles, California in the Coliseum.