We all knew that one of the major talking points going into Big Ten Media Days would be centered around the USC Trojans and Notre Dame, and Lincoln Riley’s response to the question about the future of the game.
I have already covered his response, which I thought he navigated tremendously, but of course, many outside of the Big Ten or the confines of USC have unshockingly attacked it.
Surprisingly, one of the more well-known USC and Lincoln Riley critics, On3’s Ari Wasserman, recently came to the defense of Lincoln Riley, even if it was a little backhanded towards the Big Ten as a whole.
Analyst Comes To USC Trojans HC Lincoln Riley’s Defense
In his latest piece, he wrote about how, unlike what many narratives are exuding, Riley is not running scared from Notre Dame, but in fact, just doing what every other college football coach who is a part of a conference would do.
“Then it hit me: Riley, who was one of the last coaches to speak at Big Ten Media Days, was just repeating what all the other coaches were saying the entire event,” writes Wasserman. “He used the Notre Dame rivalry as the vessel, but it was just an opportunity to continue the Big Ten’s coordinated mission to stump for commissioner Tony Petitti’s preferred 4+4+2+2 CFP Model.”
Pretty much every Big Ten coach echoed what Lincoln Riley had said in terms of favoring the automatic qualifier model for the CFP, but none of them have a historic rivalry with a non-conference team, so their opinion is typically glazed over while Riley’s is highly scrutinized.
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And in the same regard, as Riley said in his initial answer on the big stage, the two programs (USC and Notre Dame) are in “radically” different situations, being that SC is in a conference, and ND is not, so you really cannot even compare the two schools’ thought processes.
Wasserman finished his piece by saying:
“The priority right now for Riley — and seemingly every other coach in the Big Ten — is to toe the company line and help the conference negotiate its preferred CFP model, whether that results in the 4+4+2+2 or forces the SEC to go to nine conference games.”
The USC Trojans will travel to South Bend on October 18th to take on the Fighting Irish. It is currently the last game that is scheduled between the two historic programs. Will it truly be the last, or will a new deal materialize?
We will find out soon enough.