The time between Oklahoma’s loss to Oklahoma State on Saturday and USC offering Lincoln Riley its open head coaching position was “a bit of a blur.” The first-year Trojans coach revealed in an introductory news conference on Monday.
Riley was on SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt and confirmed that he first spoke with the school on Sunday morning.
“Very early Sunday morning,” Riley said. “USC engaged with some interest and wanted to have a conversation and honestly Scott, that’s the first conversation at any point in my time at Oklahoma that I’d ever had with another football team.”
It was such a drastc and shocking move that almost nobody believes that he decided on that in just 24 hours time.
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“To be honest, it was a little bit of a blur. We got home, played Saturday night, early Sunday morning. And got the information from USC that there was some real interest,” Riley said. “So I talked a little bit about it early that morning, slept a couple hours. Got a chance to jump on a Zoom with some of our university leadership and kind of talked through what this might be. It came together quickly. And to be honest in this day and age in college football it kind of has to. That’s just the way of the world right now.”
Riley leaves Oklahoma where he went 55-10 in five seasons while producing four New Year’s Day 6 berths, four Big 12 championships and three College Football Playoff appearances.
That is a lot to give up over two hours of thinking about the USC job.
