How much pressure is Lincoln Riley under to get USC back to title relevance?

Matt Leinart was the California-cool signal-caller the last time USC ruled college football. The lefty with the matinee idol looks fit the Trojans’ Hollywood script perfectly in the land of movie scripts, but the Los Angeles County native was very real and so was USC’s dominance a couple decades ago.

Leinart had just the softest touch a quarterback ever could, and his brilliant career cut to the heart of everything USC claims about its proud college football tradition. 

He was simply a winner, like the Trojans seemingly always have been, going an unfathomable 37-2 as a starter. He was both a model of excellence and consistency, throwing for 10,693 yards from 2003-05, with 99 touchdown passes and just 23 interceptions. He led USC to back-to-back national titles in 2003 and ’04, and only a Texas-sized miracle from Vince Young prevented a Leinart-led 3-peat.

USC’s 11 claimed national titles go back nearly a century, with the first championship coming in 1928, so the Trojans have been doing this winning thing for a very, very long time. Leinart and his mesmerizing band of weapons helped keep it all going, and when Leinart also captured the Heisman Trophy in 2004, it gave USC 8 Heisman winners, which is the most at any school.

So, Leinart literally did it all. He won big, and he won big games, and he helped maintain that Southern Cal Heisman tradition that the Trojans take such pride in. Those iconic USC colors, the clear-blue-sky backdrop at the Coliseum on a picture-perfect Saturday, the fight song blaring from the band — they were part of the program’s embarrassment of riches, and Leinart nurtured every aspect of it.

Now, Leinart talks about college football for a living as a FOX Sports analyst. He analyzes the field, like he did as a Trojan quarterback, and he breaks down what he sees, good, bad and otherwise. And unfortunately, what Leinart sees right now at USC is a program that’s struggling mightily to get back to being the USC that was admired for its success and hated for the same reason.

Leinart gave the USC football program he adored everything he had, which was a heck of a lot, and Trojans fans should be forever grateful for that. 

And today? 

Today, Leinart is shooting straight yet again when it comes to USC, just with his mouth and not his rocket left arm. That’s what he does for a living now anyway for FOX, and he can’t afford to sugarcoat anything just because it involves USC and a head coach in Lincoln Riley that he genuinely likes.

The talk going into the 2025 season is that Riley is on some thin ice amid those warm Los Angeles winds. And, really, why wouldn’t he be? This is Year 4 of the Riley Experiment at USC, and after piling up 11 wins in 2022 and getting everybody to buy in, the past 2 years have been a massive letdown.

In 2023, there were 5 losses and a mediocre 5-4 record in USC’s last season in the Pac-12.

If that wasn’t enough of a red alert for Riley, things got worse last season as the Trojans transitioned to the Big Ten. USC staggered to a 6-6 regular-season record and only a furious 4th-quarter rally in the Las Vegas Bowl against Texas A&M prevented the Trojans from finishing with a 7th loss.

By the way, Riley didn’t adjust well to the Big Ten, as USC limped to a 4-5 record that was unacceptable for a program of that massive stature. Anyone affiliated with USC football would tell you that — they might even scream it at you — and Riley is a smart guy, so he knows what all those losses have now created.

The head coach who’s trying to get USC back to that proud mountaintop knows, and the USC legend who had the Trojans on that mountaintop knows, too. Leinart did a recent interview with DJ Siddiqi of The Escapist, and he talked all about Riley being squarely on the hot seat as the 2025 season beckons.

“I know Lincoln very well, and he is on the hot seat. I think he would tell you that, because you have to win there — especially when you win 10 or 11 games out of the gate,” Leinart said.

In other words, Riley won really big at Oklahoma, putting up a glossy 55-10 overall record with a 37-7 Big 12 mark in the 5 seasons before heading west to USC. When he followed that with the 11 wins in his first season in Los Angeles, it made everyone in USC football circles feel like Riley was the right hire.

Now, that whole way of thinking is in serious question, because for whatever reason, the still-young guy who’ll only be 42 in a few weeks has lost his winning touch. Riley’s personal transition from Norman to LA was an extreme one by itself, but then there was another extreme transition to negotiate with USC moving from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten.

That’s a lot of tough transitioning to do in a very short amount of time, but isn’t that what Riley is getting paid the big bucks for by USC? Isn’t he getting paid a boatload to be able to handle it all?

USC rolled out the red carpet for Riley and immediately showed him the green. When the school hired him in November 2021 as the 30th head coach in USC’s proud football history, it put its trust in a proven winner in the Big 12 and rewarded Riley with a $10.1 million deal. It was the largest contract in college football coaching at the time, and when you get paid top dollar, you’re expected to deliver top-end results.

And when that doesn’t happen, you know what does happen? The whispers start, the doubts creep in, and those doubters get louder with each loss.

If the losses continue this fall and Riley fails to at least get USC back into the College Football Playoff conversation, then there are going to be major problems and questions about a hire that seemed to be a slam dunk 4 years ago.

Riley needs to start winning at USC and it needs to start immediately. After all that success at Oklahoma at such a young age and in his first career head coaching job, Riley is suddenly at a career crossroads of sorts. OU is a blueblood program, but Norman is small. 

Now, Riley’s at another blueblood program but he’s surely not in Norman anymore. He’s in a mega-sized sports market, and though USC shares the sporting spotlight in Los Angeles with the Lakers, Dodgers and Rams, along with others, people out there care deeply about USC football. It’s a SoCal treasure, just like the Coliseum the Trojans play in.

Right now, that treasure is treading water. The preseason AP Top 25 Poll screamed that earlier this month. The poll contained the usual bevy of bluebloods, topped by Texas, with defending national champion Ohio State at No. 3, Georgia at No. 5 and Alabama at No. 8. USC has almost always been one of those teams.

But not always and certainly not now. 

There was no number next to USC’s name in the preseason poll. Instead, USC was relegated to the “others receiving votes” list, and the Trojans were 5th on that list with 64 votes. Translate that, and it means that USC is thought of as the 30th-best team in college football entering the 2025 season.

At some pigskin locales, 30th-best sits just fine, or is even a cause for celebration. At USC, 30th-best is a cause for major concern, and that’s where Riley falls into the picture. Ironically (and maybe sadly), USC’s preseason ranking might be a feather in Riley’s cap since it puts the Trojans in the background to start the season with a chance to slide up into the actual rankings.

Leinart, who never had to worry about being in “others receiving votes” when he quarterbacked the USC machine in the early-to-mid 2000s, believes in that theory.

“USC is flying under the radar. I don’t even know if they’re in the Top 25 in 1 poll or both polls, which sometimes that’s a good place to be,” said Leinart in that same interview with Siddiqi.

For Leinart, no ranking doesn’t mean no pressure. It just means Riley’s talented, yet unranked team can maybe sneak up on people.

“It doesn’t mean there’s less expectations, but it kind of means no one’s really talking about you,” he explained. “You can keep your nose to the ground, you can grind, and you can start letting your play do the talking. They have a team this year that can compete in the Big Ten.”

Last season, Riley didn’t have USC ready to compete in its first year in the Big Ten, but just maybe Leinart has a point about this fall. Quarterback Jayden Maiava will be the starter this season from the beginning, trying to continue the momentum he seemed to be building toward the end of last season.

Maiava is the college quarterback in Los Angeles who isn’t named Nico Iamaleava, and perhaps that will be another advantage for him and his embattled head coach as Iamaleava soaks up a lot of attention at UCLA. Maiava was building a nice rhythm with receivers Makai Lemon and Ja’Kobi Lane in that thrilling bowl victory, and now he’ll have those 2 prime targets to throw to all season long.

Riley won’t have the excuse of having a first-year defensive coordinator, with D’Anton Lynn returning and vowing that there is now Big Ten-quality depth in the Trojans’ front 7. In other words, USC has a much better chance of not getting pushed around by those gigantic Big Ten offensive lines, which won’t solve everything but will help Lynn’s unit.

USC is one of those standard-bearer programs that make college football better when they’re good. They are beloved and hated by many, and when USC is irrelevant, there is a piece missing to the sport’s landscape. 

Right now, as the Trojans get ready to host Missouri State in Saturday’s season opener, USC football is flirting with irrelevance once again this fall. ESPN college football analyst Greg McElroy believes that AP voters “absolutely disrespected” USC with that preseason ranking, or lack thereof. He thinks the Trojans are the 11th-best team in the country entering the season, not the 30th-best.

This is what Riley is up against in 2025. A ranking number might not be next to USC’s name, at least to start the season, but the USC name itself carries a burden of expectation that so far Riley has failed to meet. It’s really that simple, and if the ugly trend continues for just 1 more season, then the guy who set the world on fire at Oklahoma might be on the firing line in LA.

USC yearns to be good again — or how about great? Great like the Trojans have been so many times in their glorious history, and great like they were when Leinart was lofting those perfect passes under those perfect Los Angeles skies.