"I knew it was going to be a good undertaking": Lincoln Riley gets real about his USC HC journey 

Lincoln Riley is heading into his fourth season as the coach of the USC Trojans, and his second year in the highly competitive Big Ten conference. It has been a tumultuous ride for him after accepting the job in 2022 and being part of a major conference realignment last season.

On Monday, he was interviewed by college football analyst Josh Pate, where he discussed the goals and ambitions of the program and how the journey turned out in comparison to the expectations.

Riley claimed that he was aware of what was ahead after he made the transition from Oklahoma to USC. The Trojans have a culturally rich program known for developing quarterbacks and winning big games. It was a huge responsibility, something that he carried forward and laid the foundations for various new initiatives like high school development programs in the coming years.

“I knew that it was going to be a big undertaking," Riley said (0:10), via 'Josh Pate's College Football Show.' "I mean, you could just look at it until there was a lot of work that was going to have to go into this. So I don't think any of that's really been surprising. And I knew to build up into becoming a perennial championship contender, to be able to play at that level all the time. I knew my heart like that's going to take some time. What you probably couldn't have completely predicted is all the other things that changed along with it, and I think that has certainly been a factor.

"I think as we've gone on, it's like you're kind of trying to balance the USC thing, but then also the college football thing at the same time. And so we've had to adapt, certainly our plan at times, we really came in with a goal in the beginning, to get some momentum early. We went really heavy in the portal. As everybody knows, we're able to be, I think, pretty successful with that early on. We're starting to transition more into really being what we want to be long term, which is a high school developmental program.”

Lincoln Riley started his coaching journey with his alma mater

Lincoln Riley has a long-standing relationship with the Texas Tech Red Raiders, where he played quarterback for the program in 2002. After wrapping up his college career, he ended up taking the student assistant job at the university from 2003 to 2005, and was promoted to graduate assistant in 2006.

In the next four years, he learned the nuances of coaching before transitioning to East Carolina in 2010. Five years later, he joined the Oklahoma Sooners as an offensive coordinator and became the coach in 2017. He then jumped to USC in 2022 with the hope of winning a national championship. Riley holds an 81-24 record as a head coach in college football.