Lincoln Riley discusses balancing revenue opportunities with preservation of program tradition

USC is now the No. 13 team in the country. The Trojans are coming off a signature win against then-No. 13 LSU and are hoping to make noise during their first year in the Big Ten. That’s what’s happening in the present, but head coach Lincoln Riley — like any college football coach right now — has an eye toward the future of the game, too.

Riley was asked Thursday about the future of the game, and specifically about how he feels about the possibility of power conference schools like USC eventually selling advertising on jerseys. To Riley, it’s about finding a balance between adapting to the sport’s changing landscape while respectfully preserving the traditions of the university.

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“I think you can do both,” Riley said. “I don’t think it has to be one or the other. You see it happening in professional sports all over the place. Some of the very, most historic and successful franchises and organizations have been able to still have all the history and tradition but also adapt to a new world.

“I still think we’re all in a little bit of an adapt or die scenario. It’s not that dire, obviously. But you can’t just sit there and [say], ‘Oh, well, this is how we’ve always done it. This is how we’re going to do it.’ I just think that’s the wrong mentality to have as a program or as an athletic department. I think you’ve got to find a way to balance both, and I think we’ve got good enough people here to figure out that.”

Riley went on: “That’s always the balance here. It’s been the balance that I’ve battled with some here. I know Jenn (USC AD Jennifer Cohen) battles with it some. We do have so much history and tradition here at SC. That’s never going to go away, it’s incredibly important. But we also have to understand that the world around us is changing, and we can’t just sit there and only live on everything that’s happened in the past. So it’s on us to find those balances, to honor that but also make sure we’re not doing anything that would hamper our ability to continue to climb, not just as a football program but as a whole athletic department.”

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Following a settlement agreement between the NCAA and the power conferences in the historic House v. NCAA case, a 10-year rollout of $2.8 billion in back-pay damages and a 10-year revenue-sharing model are expected, the latter of which, starting in 2025, is set to allow athletic departments to begin sharing up to 22% of the average power conference school’s annual revenue (estimated to be more than $20 million annually per school) with college athletes. The settlement still needs approval from Judge Claudia Wilken.

But the expectation is that revenue sharing is coming to college sports. With another expense, athletic departments are preparing to build additional revenue streams. Already, FIU sold the naming rights of its football stadium to international recording artist Pitbull.

Soon enough, transactions like that could be the norm, and so could sponsored jersey patches.

As Riley alluded to, though, the trick is adapting while not jeopardizing a program’s tradition.