Looks like the future holds some great success for Lincoln Riley and the USC Trojans. As per On3’s 2026 Industry Ranking football Team Recruiting Rankings, the Trojans have been enjoying the top spot for quite some time now. They are the No.1 recruiting class in 2026, having locked in 32 recruits. But it will be too early to throw a celebration now.
At present, tension prevails large for Riley. The USC head coach is skating on thin ice. And it’s quite thin, folks! Paul Finebaum’s take on the Trojans’ head coach says it all: “I would have fired him last year if I didn’t have to eat an $80 million buyout.” Already, Riley’s role is hanging by a thin thread, carrying a heavy weight of $80 million buyout, the largest in CFB history. Along with this, Trojans’ hefty investment is not going to pay back, increasing the weight 100x.
When it comes to dollars and influence, USC is punching well above its revenue line. Talking about college football program valuations? Riley’s Trojans rank No.8. As reported by The Athletic, their value amounts to $1.40 billion. Now, that’s definitely a huge deal. But turns out that this is one part of the story. The other part shows a choppy water situation for Riley. USC’s average football revenue is just $71.3 million. Now, this is far less than power teams like Tennessee and Georgia. Chris Vannini shared what the agents believe about the Tigers’ ROI. “I think the return on investment there is really poor, considering what they’ve done and how much they spent,” one agent said of Riley’s USC run.
NCAA, College League, USA Football: Notre Dame at Southern California Nov 30, 2024 Los Angeles, California, USA Southern California Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley leaves the field after the game against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at United Airlines Field at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Los Angeles United Airlines Field at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum California USA, EDITORIAL USE ONLY PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xKirbyxLeex 20241130_tbs_al2_082
The anonymous source further added, “Maybe there’s a lot of fingers in the pie there, but they just haven’t got what they thought they were bargaining for.” The Trojans recently stepped into the Big Ten with more than just a schedule change. It came with a financial boom. For so long, Riley’s program was tied to a Pac-12 media deal that paled in comparison to other Power conference payouts. Boarding the Big Ten wagon, they’re cashing in. That alone bumps the program’s earning potential up by tons of millions per year. Talking about investments?
Riley did not do any penny-pinching. Rather, they took up a $200 million project, the Bloom Football Performance Center. The Trojans quarterback Jayden Maiava holds the highest NIL valuation with $1.4 million. However, on the flip side, Riley’s USC struggled with revenue loss. The Interim President at the University of Southern California, Beong-Soo Kim, shared, “The ultimate impact of these changes is difficult to predict, but for a university of our scale, the potential annual revenue loss in federally sponsored research funding alone could be $300 million or more.” Now, how is Riley and co. dealing with it?
Lincoln Riley’s strategy to stop the cash from draining out
Turns out that the Trojans have followed a trial-and-error process. Their temporary measures looked like school and unit budget restrictions. Things got so out of hand in Riley’s squad that they thought of pausing the hiring. As Kim noted, “These external challenges come on top of a recurring, structural deficit in which the expenses generated by our operating model have significantly outpaced revenues for several years.” But even then, Riley could not stop the Trojans from running into a deficit.
As per the reports, they ended FY25 with a deficit of $200 million. It’s a wake-up call for Riley as this deficit is more than what they endured in the last financial year, that is $158 million. And if we take into account both the years, it makes to $358 million deficit. So, after all this, Riley has become extra-cautious to ensure that they no longer have to run in deficit and sustain their future. As Kim noted, “The university has already taken numerous steps to address these financial challenges, including: a zero-merit increase for FY26, ending certain third-party services, and additional discretionary spending and travel controls.”
On one hand, Lincoln Riley got to pull up the Trojans from the monetary abyss. While on the other hand, he got to deal with yet another hefty figure, $80 million buyout. Well, Bruce Feldman feels that it won’t be an easy call to make for the Trojans squad. On the CFB ON FOX podcast, the analyst shared, “But we’re talking about a buyout that’s going to be around $80 million, in that range. Are people going to step up to pay that kind of money?… The athletic department, I feel like, is in a big transition mode.” Will the Trojans wait for Riley’s rebuild to cash in, or will impatience cut the project short?
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