Swanson: Lincoln Riley has USC surging – expect more of the same

PUBLISHED July 28, 2023 at 2:58 p.m. | UPDATED: July 29, 2023 at 3:43 a.m.
LOS ANGELES — Come January, they could be national champions, those young men who cycled through USC’s John McKay Center on Thursday, the day before fall camp began.
It wasn’t hard to picture it, as position group by position group came through, these USC football players patiently and politely answering our probably pretty repetitive media day questions.
No problem for these guys; they know repetition.
And so, in their clean cardinal-colored jerseys, they were appropriately consistent in their responses, none of them hesitating to look us in the eye and echo what linebacker Eric Gentry said: “If you don’t think you can be the best in the country, then there ain’t no reason to be here.”
“We’re going into this season knowing what our goal is,” said Ceyair Wright, a junior defensive back from Los Angeles’ Loyola High. “But that’s everybody’s goal when they come to college.”
Sure. But everybody doesn’t just come out and just say it. And if they do, they don’t often really mean it. Or maybe they do mean it, bless their hearts, but c’mon.
These days at USC, they mean what they say.
They should. They’ve got Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Caleb Williams coming back, and everyone else does not. They’re going to have a better defense to complement him, beefed up up front and more experienced all around. They’ve got a schedule that isn’t quite a cakewalk, but which is filled with winnable games – including those road trips to Eugene, Oregon, and South Bend, Indiana.
And they’ve got Lincoln Riley, the coach who meant what he said at Pac-12 media day last year, before his first season at USC, when he proclaimed it his immediate goal to take a team that finished 4-8 the previous season and win a national championship with it: “We didn’t come here to play for second.”
The Trojans went 11-3 and forced their way into the College Football Playoff conversation, falling out only when they lost the Pac-12 Conference championship game to Utah.
The man means what he says.
That’s what his players and fellow coaches kept saying when asked to explain what they meant when they talked about the marked change in culture within USC’s football program, proud once again.
“He is a very consistent coach, if not one of the most consistent people I’ve been around,” said Lake McRee, a 6-foot-4 tight end who said he was struck by how even Riley’s demeanor remained, even after the Trojans’ first loss last year to Utah.
“If our approach every time is gonna be to go our hardest, there’s no point in changing our approach,” McRee realized. “So that just builds more trust.”
And when you can trust that your boss isn’t going to take a bad day out on you, well, that’s one fewer distraction to deal with. “You’re not walking around on eggshells,” said Dennis Simmons, a receivers coach who arrived with Riley after seven seasons in Oklahoma.
But it seems to be more than vibes. The Trojans’ habits have improved.
“I think it’s hard for coaches, they say so many different things, you might lose track. But I feel like (Riley) never does,” said long snapper Jac Casasante, another Loyola product and lifelong USC fan. “If he says something, that’s the way it’s gonna be.
“That’s maybe what we lacked in previous years. Something like parking; we weren’t supposed to park in a certain area and guys got sort of punished for a week. And then people kept parking in that area, whether they got tickets or not, they just still did it.
“If you think you can get away with something as small as parking, you think you can get away with missing a workout, you don’t have to memorize all the plays, it definitely does trickle down.”
No one’s parking where he’s not supposed to now, Casasante said.
“The best way I could put it into words,” said Wright, “is nothing slips through the cracks. Everybody always says the little things are really important, but (Riley) makes sure to take them into account.
“For example, his first week here” – Wright chuckled a bit at a painfully vivid memory – “we do accountability, right? Basically, if someone is late to something or has a missed assignment, or missed a meal, there’s one up-down for that. It’s across the whole board, whole team. Everybody has to do one up-down for me if I miss something.
“We did 131 up-downs that first Saturday. And that moment was like, ‘They’re not playing. No more missing class, no more being late to things.’ And I feel like that transfers on to the field, those habits.”
Ding! Ding! Ding! That’s what Roy Manning is always saying.
“Anyone can go hit a 3-pointer – but you ain’t Steph Curry,” said the linebackers coach, who also came from Oklahoma. “To be a high-level football player, you have to be able to play at a high level and then sustain.
“That’s my point to our guys. I have a saying: It’s hard to be the cut-corner guy off the field, looking for an out or a way to make something easy, and get on the field and now you flip the switch.
“The No. 1 thing I spend my time doing is cultivating character: This is how you handle your business off the field, because I really believe if you handle those things, then it will carry over.”
What USC has going for it – going back to Gentry, the Trojans’ dynamic 6-6 linebacker – is that handling business seems also to include taking seriously the notion that football is supposed to be fun. That playing for a championship is something to enjoy.
That mindset, along with defensive tackle Bear Alexander’s arrival from Georgia to go “hunt” opposing QBs, or Williams’ quest to be just the second player to win a second Heisman Trophy, could help position the Trojans to live up to their own lofty expectations.
“You can say you can get 1% better every day,” a reflective Gentry said. “But people don’t understand what it really is to do that. It’s really just striving to be the best and having the right head space every day. And it’s a game, it’s something that you’re supposed to have fun with …
“So that’s why I really feel like it’s all in this year. Every day you go hard, and the reason I say, ‘Be best in the country,’ is we’re really trying to do the right thing.”
And he means it.
“We didn’t come here to beat Rice. We didn’t come here to beat Stanford. We came to win a National Championship here”❕✌🏼