Lincoln Riley ran west from Oklahoma, and five years later, he's still running.
After Riley's USC Trojans squirmed out of their storied rivalry with Notre Dame, they had a hole to quickly fill on the 2026 schedule, and Sports Illustrated's Bryan Fischer reported on Wednesday that USC replaced the massive matchup against Notre Dame with a Week 0 meeting against San Jose State. With the move, the Trojans won't play a single Power Four opponent out of conference in 2026.
USC replaces Notre Dame rivalry with San Jose State
With the SEC switching to a nine-game conference schedule like the Big Ten, it's now a rule that SEC teams must also schedule either Notre Dame or a Power Four opponent on their nonconference slate. For instance, the Sooners will travel to play a top-15 Michigan team on the road Week 2. The Big Ten doesn't have a such a rule, though, and people like Riley will avoid as much competition as he's allowed to.
News like this is no surprise to OU fans. They witnessed Riley sprint from competition the moment he heard the Sooners would soon be leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. OU won four Big 12 titles in a row with Riley as head coach. Riley was able to scorch Big 12 defenses with loads of talent on offense and didn't have to worry about having such a porous defense. But when Riley's OU teams finally faced worthy competition in the College Football Playoff, they never got past the first round in three straight tries. There was no way Riley would dare to face that on a weekly basis.
It was funny to OU fans that soon after Riley set sights to do the same thing in the even weaker Pac-12, USC headed to the Big Ten, which has risen to be an equal with the SEC. In the Trojans' first year in the Big Ten in 2024, they went 4-5 in conference play.
Riley and USC saw the writing on the wall then, and that's when talks started of the Notre Dame-USC rivalry ending after being played almost every year since 1926. Only World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic had managed to halt the annual clash before the Trojans killed it to have a weaker schedule.
Some things just never change, though. Riley is still scared to death of a challenge, and the Sooners, even while enduring an SEC gauntlet under Brent Venables, are still making the College Football Playoff.