USC doesn’t have an athletic director right now. The Trojans appear to be in no real hurry to hire Mike Bohn’s replacement. This does bring up a question: How much is riding on the new hire as it relates to Lincoln Riley? Does Riley need to really hit it off with the new athletic director, or is this a situation where, as long as Riley has full institutional and resource-based support from USC, he will be happy?
Riley has used the word “alignment” in the past to describe the situations he has faced as a coach within an athletic department. Why did he leave Oklahoma? Why did he come to USC? Those questions, which have been discussed and litigated before, might shed some light on what the new USC athletic director needs to do.
Words from Oklahoma expert Kegan Reneau on The Riley Files are worth thinking about in this context:
What happened in Oklahoma? I’ve said it multiple times: It’s like he told you in the first 10 minutes of his (initial) press conference at USC in Southern California,” Reneau said. “He told you exactly why he left Oklahoma. He just didn’t tell you word for word. He very smartly baked in a bunch of comments about alignment and vision and resources and potential and direction, and a bunch of items that, to most journalists, (are) really weird. He has said this multiple times by this point. He is very smart, beyond his years. He has very good intuition. He’s very intellectual. This is a guy who is always thinking ahead of you, regardless of what you think he is thinking.”
That last part about Riley thinking ahead is certainly worth thinking about.
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