The Monday Read: Three years in, have Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley been worth the investment for LSU, USC?

Almost three years ago to the day, and within 48 hours of each other, Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley sent a seismic shift throughout college football. It was unthinkable that the current coaches of either Notre Dame or Oklahoma would voluntarily leave their jobs for another college team … but that’s exactly what they did. With 20 years and $200 million pledged to both of them, what has the return been on all that investment?
At LSU and USC, respectively, Kelly and Riley made their conference championship games in Year 1 and coached Heisman Trophy winners. And yet both sit in Year 3 having fallen short of expectations. They have both been felled by bad defenses and stuck their foot in their mouths to varying degrees publicly. Overall, Riley is 23-13 and Kelly is 26-10. Good, but not great.
To borrow a phrase from the players they coach, the vibes are off. Riley’s clashed repeatedly with a media landscape that’s far different in the big city than the one he faced in Norman, Oklahoma. Kelly’s banged on tables out of frustration and recently admitted his team looked like they didn’t practice for two weeks before facing Alabama.
What a difference two months have made since the spectacular season-opener in Las Vegas (a 27-20 win for the Trojans).
You could argue that the expectations they face are unfair, but LSU’s last three coaches (Ed Orgeron, Les Miles, Nick Saban) have won national championships. Riley’s initial just-add-water approach hasn’t materialized in one most fertile recruiting grounds in the country.
It is true that both programs are in serious danger of losing their highly touted quarterback recruits. Colorado and Indiana have made inroads with USC commit Julian Lewis, and Michigan is swinging hard at LSU commit Bryce Underwood (who was on hand for the rainy loss to Alabama). For now, Garrett Nussmeier (LSU) and (likely) Jayden Maiava (USC) are at the controls. Both are promising signal-callers, although Nussmeier has played poorly in two of the biggest games of the year.
USC is in a new world where they feel increasingly out of place. Of the Big Ten’s four new West Coast programs, only Oregon looks like it belongs. It’s hard to really peg what USC even hangs its hat on right now as a team. The defense has gotten better from last year’s poor performances, but it’s been offset by the offense getting comparably worse, which was to be expected when you lose a talent like Caleb Williams. The video game numbers for Riley’s offense aren’t there this year. But four conference losses in the team’s final year in the Pac 12, and at least five in its first year in the Big Ten, do not create much cause for optimism.
Questions abound about how cut out Riley is for this era of college football, and industry sources bring up an NIL infrastructure that’s still not befitting of a top notch program.
LSU at least has a more straightforward task as a mess you can get your arms around. They haven’t been able to fix what was broken on defense last year, and Jalen MIlroe’s 185 yards rushing were simple proof of that. He picked up where LaNorris Sellers and Marcel Reed began as mobile quarterbacks who have carved LSU’s defense like a cajun turkey. At a place like LSU where great defenders seem to go on trees, it is doubly damming.
LSU feels like it’s in neutral, with another season-opening loss in a big-time game (for the third year in a row) and a loss to Alabama as the missed opportunities we’ll look back on. USC feels like it’s sliding backwards, needing to go 2-1 in its remaining three games (Nebraska, UCLA, Notre Dame) to make a bowl. Three years into both tenures, it doesn’t seem like anyone’s getting what they paid for.
Carousel update of the week
Someone isn’t telling the truth at Kennesaw State.
Coach Brian Bohannon is out following a 1-8 start to the Owls’ inaugural FBS campaign. There’s nothing new about teams struggling to make the jump in Year 1, but how the divorce has been announced is interesting.