Lincoln Riley: ‘USC Football is Excited to Compete in the Big Ten’
Lincoln Riley, the head coach at USC, sounds excited about the Trojans’ move to the Big Ten in 2024, according to a report on Sunday.
The Action Network’s Brett McMurphy caught up with Riley, who was the head coach at Oklahoma before he moved to USC after the 2021 regular season.
Riley hasn’t even started his first season at USC and he’s already anticipating a conference change — just as he was anticipating one with Oklahoma, which is set to join the SEC in 2025.
“This move to the Big Ten positions all of our teams for long-term success. It provides our student-athletes with more exposure, new resources & challenges them w/elite competition. USC Football is excited to compete in the Big Ten.”
On Thursday, USC and UCLA announced they had applied for membership in the Big Ten Conference, and the league approved that application the same day. In 2024, the Big Ten will have 16 teams, but the Trojans and Bruins will be the only ones in the Pacific time zone.
The Big Ten is reportedly done with expansion for now.
As a result of this move, the ACC, the Big 12 and the Pac-12 are all contemplating what moves they may need to make. The ACC, which has a long grant of media rights like the Big 12, may be on borrowed time, if one report is accurate. The Big 12 appears to alternating between a report from McMurphy that the league is aggressively pursuing other Pac-12 members and not doing anything, per another report by CBS’s Dennis Dodd.
The Pac-12 put out a statement on Friday saying that it would pursue expansion but provided no timetable.
Matthew Postins can be found on Twitter @PostinsPostcard
