On Friday, USC President Carol Folt announced that she would retire at the end of the academic year, which is in the summer of 2025. Folt’s legacy as a steward of USC football will earn mixed reviews, but this much needs to be said: USC successfully hiring Lincoln Riley in November of 2021 showed that Folt cared about football success more than a lot of her fiercest critics thought she did. Folt received a lot of apologies — and goodwill — from USC fans after the Riley hire. Until then, a lot of USC fans and alumni reasonably thought she didn’t care about the sport, given that Clay Helton stayed on the job far too long.
Lincoln Riley knows that the next USC president will step into a situation where Riley will be coaching under intense pressure. This season is a bust. The 2025 season needs to deliver the goods; it always did need to become a strong statement about the health of USC football. Riley was always going to need a big 2025 at USC. Now, with a new president coming in the door next year, it becomes even more important for Riley to correct the mistakes and address the shortcomings we have seen this season at USC. His buyout is still large, which might mean he will coach USC in 2026 regardless of who becomes president, but a change in leadership is certainly a plot point to pay attention to for the USC football program and its embattled head coach.
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