USC enters Holiday Bowl stuck between a program overhaul and a final chapter – Daily News

SAN DIEGO — Lincoln Riley has been here before, in a different time, back when he was a bright-eyed budding savant removed from all the burdens of being an embattled mind with gradually lightening hair.

One of his earliest memories in collegiate football, Riley recounted in early December, was a 2004 cross-country trip to San Diego when he was a student assistant to the late Mike Leach at Texas Tech. The Red Raiders faced Cal there in the Holiday Bowl, back in the Golden Bears’ heyday, led by none other than one-time Green Bay Packers destroyer Aaron Rodgers – and came out on top in a 45-31 barnburner, as then-Texas Tech defensive line coach Ruffin McNeill called the offense “explosive.”

“To this day, all the different bowls and big games, all that I’ve been able to coach in, that’s still one of my favorite memories,” Riley reflected in early December.

His career took off shortly thereafter, eventually following McNeill to East Carolina, named a savant at Oklahoma and then a savior at USC. But almost exactly 19 years later, after he watched Leach outgun Rodgers, Riley leads USC back into San Diego in a position he’s rarely faced across a trailblazing rise in the coaching business: failure.

It has shown, in this particular bowl game placement after a 7-5 season, this trip to San Diego feeling like a strange afterthought in no man’s land rather than the exclamation to a season. Just a few steadfast villagers remain on 2023’s Disappointment Island. Quarterback Caleb Williams built himself a lavish boat and set sail for NFL draft waters. Starting running back MarShawn Lloyd and wide receiver Brenden Rice followed. A swarm of other contributors, like Domani Jackson and Tackett Curtis, tossed life rafts into the shark-infested waters of the transfer portal.

In that vein, through a six-week period when USC has watched both regular-season and bowl games without playing themselves, Riley has set about completely reconfiguring the program after two years that haven’t quite amounted to the expectations that came with his move to Los Angeles. He promised USC would play great defense; he’s hired three coaches with college defensive coordinator experience. He wanted to get bigger and stronger defensively entering the Big Ten; he’s brought in an army of defensive difference-makers through the transfer portal and the 2024 recruiting class.

“A lot of it is brand new, and in some ways, a lot of ways, starting over,” Riley said on the early national signing day last week, referring to USC’s program-building approach with the ’24 class. “But there’s a lot of excitement with that.”

One cannot completely start over, however, with chapters in the present left unfinished. And Wednesday night’s Holiday Bowl matchup with Louisville, really, is more importantly a preview to 2024 than a close to 2023. Quarterback Miller Moss will get his first start after three years. A horde of young receivers will have auditions for prominent roles in spring practice, while defensive veterans like Jaylin Smith, Mason Cobb and Jacobe Covington will essentially re-audition for rotational roles for 2024. And co-interim defensive coordinators Brian Odom and Shaun Nua will be coaching for their jobs – either with USC or on a different staff.

When USC has the ball

The Holiday Bowl hasn’t even arrived, and it’s already grown tiresome to say it’s Miller Time. But it is, indeed, Miller Time.

“He understands the opportunity that’s here,” Riley said of Moss at the Holiday Bowl coaches’ press conference on Tuesday. “I mean, he’s been – you could argue he’s been waiting three years for an opportunity like this.”