Lincoln Riley reveals change he would make to college football

With the addition of NIL, the transfer portal, and all the recent conference realignment, college football appears to have more questions than answers at this point. Some might consider this a classic ‘too many chefs in the kitchen,’ scenario as everyone is jockeying to find the correct answers, at least for their respective programs. But when it comes to college football as a whole, one head coach believes he has the solution to the problem in the USC Trojans, Lincoln Riley.

Recently, Riley was asked what changes he would make to help the game of college football. According to the Trojans headman, the game at the collegiate level needs to model that of the NFL.

“Yeah, one CEO or commissioner,” said Riley. “I think you’ll basically go to an NFL model. The NFL has wildly succeeded. We’ve certainly crossed over into that world, you re-outline all of these conferences… You have one head.

“You have a salary cap, And then [players] can go earn outside of that however they want to, just like an NFL player can. I don’t know how long, I don’t know how fast, but I feel like some form or fashion of that is coming.”

The current powers in charge, the NCAA, have been firm in their stance that college football is an amateur sport with collegiate student-athletes, not employees. But since the dawn of NIL, that belief is not as bone unilaterally as it once was. Not only that but there is little legislation on the new system, making it completely unbalanced. With Riley’s idea, there would be one voice for all, balancing the college football landscape so that everyone gets a fair opportunity to expand the possibilities of their program.

Riley on the transfer portal

Riley was one of the first high-profile coaches to embrace the transfer portal after taking a new job. When he left Oklahoma for USC, he brought in 19 transfers to overhaul the Trojans’ roster and get them to the Pac-12 Championship in an impressive turnaround.

He also acknowledged the portal has its flaws, particularly when it comes to the amount of players who enter. There’s not always enough roster spots, which is why some players don’t wind up finding new homes after transferring.

But as the NCAA begins to get the numbers together — including graduation rate — Riley said he expects things to change for the better. Until then, it’s all about navigating the complicated landscape.

“Right now, there’s no data,” Riley told Graham Bensinger on In Depth with Graham Bensinger. “So everybody’s just going off in all these different directions on what they think is right. When we start to see what is the real success rate of these transfers — are these transfers graduating? I feel like that’ll level off.”

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