The USC head coaching search of 2021, if you remember it, was a wild ride. Roughly 48 hours before Lincoln Riley was announced as the Trojans’ new head coach, the industry speculation centered around Iowa State’s Matt Campbell as the guy who was closing in on becoming USC’s head coach. That turned out to be a smokescreen, as did the rumors that Lincoln Riley might be interested in the LSU job.
This year, Jen Cohen referred to Saturday’s conference championship games as a possible factor in USC’s defensive coordinator search. That comment turned out to be a smokescreen, since USC hired its man — D’Anton Lynn of UCLA — on Friday night, before Saturday’s college football games.
If Matt Campbell was the hot name late in the 2021 head coaching search, 2023 featured Nebraska’s Tony White as the hot name late in the process.
Campbell and White were smokescreens for the moves USC eventually made.
Let’s remember the Tony White speculation as one of the central markers of a wild USC defensive coordinator search in 2023: