From a matter of perspective, USC’s process to find new head coach Lincoln Riley did not begin in September with the firing of Clay Helton. It started two years earlier, soon after Mike Bohn was hired away from Cincinnati to be USC’s new athletic director.
Bohn and chief of staff Brandon Sosna sat down for their first meetings with Helton and his assistants. Many USC fans at the time wished that the coaching staff had been relieved of its duties there and then. But Bohn and Sosna had a question instead.
What do you need?
USC had fallen woefully behind other college football blue bloods in infrastructure, from recruiting staff to nutrition specialists to strength staff. Sosna wrote the coaches’ answers on a Post-It and placed it on his new desk.
He and Bohn went to work putting checks next to those items, making sure Helton had the resources to do the job before deciding to look for someone else to do it.
“We’ve all observed a number of programs that seem to believe that the answer is to consistently hire and fire and hire and fire without recognizing that, much like an NFL coach with a general manager and ownership, that alignment and support and resources are critical,” Sosna said on Monday after Riley’s introduction.
“I don’t think two years ago Lincoln Riley would be the head coach at USC. I don’t know that for sure, but I think that the state of our program and the alignment of our university and our leadership, all that you heard up there, that was very real.”
Once it was time for USC to begin the actual coaching search, the first name that came to mind was Lincoln Riley’s. He had been Bohn and Sosna’s white whale, a name they first floated in 2014 when Bohn was in Cincinnati and Sosna was his intern, and Riley was offensive coordinator at East Carolina.
When they reached out to Riley in 2017, he neither answered nor returned their calls, as he was on the verge of being promoted to head coach at Oklahoma. In 2021, Bohn and Sosna had to wait two months to see if he would pick up the phone this time around.
In the meantime, they went about their process. They vetted dozens of candidates. They presented a 50-page slideshow to industry insiders to spread the gospel about the rebuilt USC. They consulted and strategized with university president Carol L. Folt and board of trustees chairman Rick Caruso. They organized a transition team to expedite and plan the roll out of the announcement.
All the while, Riley remained at the top of list. But that remained a closely guarded secret. Even when Riley agreed to an interview, USC elected to conduct it over Zoom rather than risk taking a private plane to Norman.
“Any time you try to do something in person with timing, it can be problematic. More people have to get involved. The Twitter flight tracker guys are gonna be problematic,” Sosna said. “And I think the biggest threat to anything like this is word getting out.”
But of all the things that had to align for USC to even get a foot in the door with Riley, the last was the most chaotic of all: the result of a football game.
As USC faced BYU on Saturday in the Coliseum, Bohn and Sosna had Oklahoma’s game against Oklahoma State on in their suite. They lived and died by every zany update: The Cowboys taking an early lead, only for the Sooners to respond. Oklahoma State returning a kickoff for a touchdown. Oklahoma scoring 16 unanswered to take a two-possession lead. The Cowboys going back ahead thanks to a muffed punt by the Sooners. Finally, mercifully, the fourth-down sack at the OSU 32 with eight seconds left to ice the game.
Riley’s regular season was over. The Sooners would not be going to the Big 12 championship game nor the College Football Playoff. It was time for USC to make contact, instead of pivoting to Plan B in the face of Riley’s extended season.
“It sort of felt a little bit like ‘Ender’s Game,’ when Oklahoma State won that game,” Sosna said, referring to the 1985 science-fiction novel that became a 2013 action movie. “It sort of felt like, ‘Hey, the enemy’s gates are down, let’s go get it done.’”
From there, Bohn and Sosna fine-tuned their presentation through the night, checking with Folt and Caruso throughout. And only after that did they learn that the work that began two years ago – and some luck – had paid off.
“Just because it’s USC, that’s a great start, but that’s all it is, a start,” Riley said. “You better have the right people behind it, you better have commitment at all levels, you better have alignment at all levels or you’re not going to be successful. And when I met with university leadership, I could see total alignment. And more than just alignment, there was excitement. You could tell, they were ready to go and their energy just spoke to me.”
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