by Paul Teetor
The gold and cardinal USC banners came out of deep storage Sunday afternoon, and started flying all over the beach cities. Whether they were hanging from a showy over-priced multi-million-dollar mega-mansion, a boxy concrete duplex carved up into a rat-hole megaplex, or a run-down sea shack eyesore – yes, there are still a few – the message was the same: We’re back, baby.
Meanwhile crowds of delirious Trojan fans were dancing in the Coliseum Sunday night, just hours after the unbelievable news broke: USC had just hired Oklahoma Head coach Lincoln Riley, the hottest young football coach in America, to replace Interim Coach Dante Williams, who replaced Clay Helton back in September, two weeks into what turned into a nightmare season.
If you went out to the end of the Manhattan Beach Pier and listened closely, you could hear the lyrics to “Happy Days are Here Again” wafting over the waves. You could also hear that annoying “Fight On” Trojan ditty being played over, and over again, just as it is at every USC game.
The Beach Cities are honey-combed with USC alumni and USC fans – you don’t have to be an alumnus to be a Trojan fan – and their joy could not be restrained after years of being beaten down by a conga line of post-Pete Carroll coaches like Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian and Helton. Together, they presided over a fandango of failure that culminated in a 29-point point loss to archrival UCLA two weeks ago.
Forget about the close loss to Brigham Young University Saturday night that dropped the Trojans record to 4-7 and shut them out of Bowl consideration. The Lincoln Riley era started the very next day on November 28, 2021. Mark it on your calendar: it’s going to be a historic day, akin to the day more than 20 years ago when USC stumbled into its last great football hire, that of Head Coach Pete Carroll.
But While Carroll was USC’s third or fourth or maybe even fifth choice (depending on which Heritage Hall source you choose to believe) Riley landed in LA after a 3-month national coaching search that at one point got so intense that Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin, who has been in his job forever and projects as a Steeler lifer, had to forcefully denounce the rumors that he was headed to USC. He even warned the media not to ask him about it again because he wasn’t going to dignify the crazy speculation with an answer.
Riley, who won 85 percent of his games and got his team into the 4-team College Football Playoff three times in his five years at Oklahoma, also developed two consecutive Heisman Trophy winners: Baker Mayfield, now the quarterback of the Cleveland Browns, and Kyler Murray, now the quarterback of the Arizona Cardinals and a contender for the title of best young quarterback in the NFL, along with the Chargers’ Justin Herbert and the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen.
Oh, and he convinced running quarterback Jalen Hurts to transfer from Alabama to Oklahoma, where he developed his passing skills enough that he is now the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.
With this one huge, game-changing hire USC Athletic Director Mike Bohn has earned his stratospheric salary and kept the bloodhounds from his door for the next three years at least. But make no mistake: If Riley, 38, hasn’t gotten the Trojans back to the top of the PAC-12 heap and into a big-time bowl game by 2024 then the honeymoon will be over and the booster bitching will begin all over again.
Riley is known as an offensive-minded coach, an innovator who works on the cutting edge of modern attacking football: lots of mis-direction, play-action passes and running backs coming out of the backfield and turning into passing targets.
Of course, the smartest game plan in the world won’t work without the personnel to carry it out under duress, and that’s another area that Riley has excelled in at Oklahoma: recruiting.
He’s already dabbled in luring elite SoCal talent to Oklahoma, so Riley knows the important “advisors” and “influencers” who help send the very top recruits to the very top schools. In the immediate aftermath of this announcement, look for reports of top recruits “flipping” on their college commitments and coming to USC – in other words, reneging on promises they made to coaches at other high-end football schools like Alabama, Oregon, Ohio State and…. Oklahoma!
Indeed, by Monday morning four top recruits who had committed to Oklahoma announced they were de-committing. The best of them all, Los Alamitos quarterback Malachi Nelson and Mater Dei running back Raleek Brown, are both now expected to announce they will be attending USC.
One litmus test Riley will have to pass to keep the Trojan boosters happy: when another no-doubt-tops-in-the-nation quarterback recruit like Bryce Young, who came out of Mater Dei to become the best quarterback in college football this year at Alabama, has to make his choice it better be USC.
And why wouldn’t it be? The best of the best at the most important position on the football field care about one thing and one thing only: getting their skills developed well enough to prosper in the pros. Riley has a long track record of doing just that, and the best predictor of the future is the past. So he will be expected to be a quarterback magnet, and he will then be expected to develop the next great USC quarterback to follow in the cleats of Carson Palmer, Mark Sanchez and Manhattan Beach’s own Matt Leinart – all SoCal guys who stayed home and, in the cases of Palmer and Leinart, won the Heisman Trophy.
The weird part about this hire is that Riley was the first name that popped up in the mainstream media when the SC job came open three months ago. It seemed like it would be a great fit and a great storyline: a great coach arrives to a hero’s welcome and quickly revives a once-great football program.
But the media moved on when word filtered out of Norman, Oklahoma that Riley wasn’t interested. So the pool of available names expanded to include Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell, Baylor Coach Dave Aranda, and Iowa State Coach Matt Campbell. All were very successful, up-and-coming coaches, but none of them were nearly as exciting or as well-known as Riley, so USC fans were resigned to making a show of fake excitement when the new hire was finally announced with fake fanfare.
What changed Riley’s mind? All Ball is not a mind-reader, but one factor had to be Oklahoma’s recent decision to join the Southeastern Conference, the dominant football conference in the entire country, with traditional powerhouses like Alabama, Auburn and LSU.
Riley was used to dominating the Big-12, so the prospect of finishing second, third or fourth in the ultra-competitive SEC had to be daunting. Quickly dominating the PAC-12 figures to be much easier than trying to slowly work your way to the top of the SEC hierarchy. Throw in the lure of SoCal and all that comes with it – the sun, the sand, Hollywood and the second biggest media market in the country – and Riley made the smart choice.
A few hours after USC announced that Riley had been hired, they moved to address the one criticism that had already begun bubbling up on Twitter: that Riley was mainly an offensive coach and did not have the background or expertise to fix the Trojan’s biggest problem, their porous defense. Any team that allows UCLA and its fatally flawed Chip Kelly offense to drop 62 points on it is a defense that needs to be revamped from top to bottom and stocked with new talent.
So a few hours after they announced Riley’s hiring, SC announced that his long-time defensive coordinator, Alex Grinch, would also be coming to LA.
Problem solved, although it was probably a very expensive solution. Since USC is a private institution, they don’t have to reveal what they are paying their new coaches. Based on market value and comparative hires at public schools, however, you can bet that Riley is getting at least $10 million a year and probably considerably more, while Grinch is getting at least $5 million and probably considerably more.
All Ball has to wonder how these astronomical salaries have to make the adjunct professors working for little more than minimum wage feel? What exactly are USC’s priorities – big-time athletics or top-shelf academics?
But the sad truth is that question was answered long ago: athletics. Riley’s hiring is just the latest indication of that eternal truth. It was that way when John Wayne and Ward Bond were on the USC football team a century ago and it will probably still be that way a century from now.
The big loser in all of the uproar over Riley coming to revive SC’s football fortunes? UCLA and Coach Chip Kelly. Just when he finally posts a winning record after four pathetic years and gets the Bruins into a bowl game (which one is still to be determined) he and his Bruins become a distant afterthought in the LA sporting world.
Almost 40 years ago, another guy named Riley took over the head coaching job of the LA Lakers and led them to five NBA titles in 10 years. If Lincoln Riley does half as well as Pat Riley did, he will become just as much of an LA legend as that other Riley.
Fasten your seat belt, renew your season tickets at the Coliseum, and keep that USC cardinal and gold banner handy.
You’re gonna need it.
Mustang ballers stayin’ alive
When the Mira Costa boys basketball team found itself with the ball and trailing West Torrance by a single point with five seconds to go Monday night, Coach Neal Perlmutter immediately called a timeout.
“We have a play for exactly that situation,” Perlmutter said moments after the game. “We practice it every day.”
In this case, practice made for perfection: they ran their play with three different players cutting through the key until finally junior point guard Will Householter got the ball at the top of the key and a clear lane momentarily in front of him.
Householter headed on a straight line for the hoop as three West defenders closed in on him. Before they could knock the ball away Householter knew he wasn’t going to get all the way to the rim or beat the clock. So he launched himself into the air and let fly with a floating shot even as he was still going forward and to the left to avoid a lunging arm coming right at him.
The ball had just enough arc to make it over the rim but did not go cleanly through. Instead, it hit the back of the rim and rolled around before finally settling into the net and setting off what passed for jubilation in the sparsely packed Costa gym
It was the first night of the Mira Costa Pacific Shores Tournament, and the host Mustangs barely survived by a score of 51-50 over a gutty, well-coached West team.
The white-knuckle win was the culmination of a crazy day for the Mustangs. They woke up Monday morning with a 6-0 record, winners of the Jim Harris Memorial Tournament last week, and ranked in the LA Times Prep Basketball Top 25 rankings for the first time in what seemed like forever.
Granted, they were ranked 25th out of the 25 top Southland teams, but still it was an exciting moment for a program that hadn’t made the LAT Top 25 rankings in more than 20 years.
“The kids were passing it around all day,” Perlmutter said. “I was worried it might go to their heads.”
He had good reason to be worried: West grabbed a quick 10-2 in the early going. The Warriors were quicker to the ball, more aggressive on the boards, and were hitting their own shots while putting relentless defensive pressure on the Mustangs and preventing the kind of mid-range shots that they had been making all year.
West was led by their big man, 6-foot-6 Cole Jacobs, a junior forward-center with good footwork and a sweet shot.
The Mustangs crawled back to within 16-13 at the end of the first quarter, mostly on stick-backs of missed shots. Their offense was totally out of sync.
“We didn’t look ready to play,” Perlmutter said. “Some guys were missing shots they normally make. But you have to credit West’s defense for that.”
West continued to dominate in the second quarter. But when the Mustangs breakout star Dylan Black, a 6-foot-2 junior shooting guard, now in his third year on varsity, swished a long 3-pointer with five seconds to go that pulled them within 25-21, it looked like the Mustangs were finally getting over their holiday hangover.
West guard Amare Holmes raced downcourt and launched a 30-foot bomb that fell cleanly through the net just before the halftime buzzer and killed whatever momentum the Mustangs thought they had regained on Black’s shot.
Costa came out of the locker room grim-faced and determined to show they were better than they had played in the first half. Junior shooting guard Nick Lundy was a beast on the boards, hitting several stick backs and once even crashing hard to the floor when he was undercut on a rebound attempt. He lay face down on the floor for a minute as the gym went completely silent before slowly standing up and hitting one of his two foul shots to pull the Mustangs within 32-28.
West pulled ahead 36-30 before Householter responded with a get-out-of-my-way drive followed by a 3-pointer that closed the gap to 36-35. From there it was a dogfight right to the scintillating end-game.
The Mustangs finally pulled ahead 37-36 at the end of the third quarter on a Black layup, and Costa’s lead grew to 45-40 on another Black power drive mid-way through the fourth quarter. But West refused to fold and actually came all the way back to lead 50-49 with 5.4 seconds left. That’s when Perlmutter called timeout and set the stage for Householter’s miracle shot.
“We were lucky to win this game,” Perlmutter said. “West came out with a great game plan and totally outplayed us in the first half. But Will hit an incredible shot to win it for us, so we’ll take the win and move on.”
Lundy led the Mustangs with 17 hard-earned points, while Householter racked up 13 and Black chipped in with 9 points.
The Pac Shores field includes Brentwood and Carson in the A Pool, along with Costa and West. The B Pool consists of Gardena, Mary Star, Venice and Rolling Hills Prep. Of those eight teams, Rolling Hills Prep with star guard Benny Gealer is the only other team ranked in the LA Times Top 25, at number 8.
If form holds – and it usually does in these kinds of pool play tournaments – Mira Costa should emerge from Pool A and RH Prep from Pool B to play in the championship game Saturday night.
If that matchup comes to pass, the undefeated Costa team will face an even bigger test than the one they barely passed Monday night.
Kobe’s House
Don’t the geniuses who came up with Crypto.com Arena to replace Staples Center think ahead at all? Are they incapable of looking around corners?
These corporate types in their skinny suits and $500 Italian loafers just don’t get it: you can make a naming rights deal for $700 million over 20 years, but you can’t force the fans to use the corporate name no matter how many times their media flacks repeat it.
Exhibit A: the newly named Crypto.com Arena is already commonly known as The Crypt – just days after the new name was announced last Wednesday!
How long will it be before some hack sports writer declares that the Lakers came back from the dead in the Crypt?
Not long.
It’s not that anyone is lamenting the loss of the name Staples Center. Who cares about an office supply company named after a bendy piece of metal that holds papers together?
No one.
But the Staples Center is the place where Kobe and Shaq won a three-peat, where Kobe and Pau won two titles in three years, and where Chris Paul and Blake Griffin choked away their two best shots at an NBA title. That’s where memories were made.
And besides the sentimental Staples Center memories, it also flows off the tongue a lot more smoothly than Crypto.com Arena.
If you think the fans are going to embrace the new name just because the Singapore-based currency exchange wants them to, just look around the country at how fans have insisted on hanging their own nicknames on the athletic venues they go to despite their corporate overlords trying to dictate the names.
In Washington, D.C. fans call the Capital One Arena the Vault.
In New Orleans fans call the Smoothie King Center The Blender. (That’s All Ball’s personal favorite.)
In Brooklyn, fans called the Barclays Center the Ballers Paradise – at least until anti-vaxxer Kyrie Irving was banished from the team. Now it’s Paradise Lost.
In Cleveland Cavaliers fans call the Rocket Mortgage Field House the Q.
In Chicago, Bulls fans call the United Center the UC, so at least it’s not a complete loss for the corporate types.
In Boston Celtics fans call the TD Garden the Boston Garden because their greatest teams always played in the Boston Garden and always will, no matter what its bought-and-sold name currently is.
In Minneapolis Timberwolves fans call The Target Center the Den.
Likewise in Charlotte the Spectrum Center is called the Hive because that’s where the Hornets play.
And in Oklahoma City the Paycom Arena is called the Thunder Dome because that’s where the Thunder play.
So Good Luck to the corporate crypto clowns who made this naming rights deal. They’ll never learn that a name is not for sale.
It has to bubble up from the people at the bottom: the customers.
In that spirit, All Ball would like to suggest a new name that we think will be universally accepted and acclaimed: Kobe’s House.
Let the corporate types work out the financial details with the Lakers and Kobe’s family. This would be a way to honor the greatest player ever to play there, and at the same time put some salve on the open wound left by Kobe Bryant’s tragic death just in time for the second anniversary of the Jan. 26 helicopter crash that will always be one of those “where were you when you heard?” moments for all Angelenos, sports fans or not.
It’s a helluva lot better name than Crypto.com Arena.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER
