A quick glance at USC head coach Lincoln Riley

Penn State will face a variety of head coaches this season, some that they are familiar with and some they may never have faced before or even heard of. This week, they will be facing a head coach they are all too familiar with, with ambitions of returning to the CFP yet again, this time with a Big Ten program.

Here’s more on USC head coach Lincoln Riley.

Overall record: 95-29

Record against Penn State: 0-1

Record against ranked teams: 5-15

Record against Big Ten: 6-6

While Lincoln Riley has been returning USC back to national relevance ever since their transition from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten, he is known for mentoring some of college football’s best ever quarterbacks, with three of them becoming Heisman winners. Learning under Mike Leach has helped him become of college football’s greatest offensive minds and has led him to more prominence than almost any other coach over the past decade.

Consider the fact that in just four seasons with the Oklahoma Sooners as their head coach, he led them to four Big 12 titles and 3 CFP appearances. With Baker Mayfield, in their first season together, he took the Sooners to the CFP semifinals, where they played in one of college football’s best ever games, a 54-48 double OT loss to the Georgia Bulldogs. Whie Riley didn’t win that game, he proved that he would be able to lead some of college football’s tewo most innovative offenses.

What became most impressive was how he developed QBs that may not have had the biggest physical advantages. At 6-1 and 5-10 respectively, both Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray were not thought of as the standard prototype for a modern college football QB. Still, Riley was able to find the best traits in both: for Mayfield, his gunslinging aggressiveness downfield, and for Murray, his elite speed: to create advantages for Oklahoma’s offense. Even when Alabama transfer Jalen Hurts was his QB, he found a way to implement into his offense. However, it was his discovery of Caleb Williams that really launched Lincoln Riley into the coaching elite.

When Oklahoma was struggling through their Red River rivalry matchup against Texas with Spencer Rattler at the helm, Riley decided to make a bold move and install true freshman QB Caleb Williams into the offense. From there, Williams led the Sooners all the way back and became Lincoln Riley’s next huge QB phenomenon. While the Sooner did not make the Big 12 title game that year, it turned out to be Riley’s last year with the Sooners, as USC came calling. With him, he took Caleb Williams and they created a whole other offensive juggernaut.

In their transition to the Pac 12 together, both Riley and Williams found instant success. However, there was always one Achilles heel: Utah and a defense that could stop no one. While Williams was always good enough to play superhero, for some reason they could never beat Cam Rising, Kyle Whittingham, and a feisty Utah squad. As a result, one of the most talented coach-QB combinations in college football history not only never won a Pac 12 championship, but never even sniffed the CFP. As a result, questions of whether Riley had lost his magic touch started to arise as USC struggled to field a more balance squad.

Now, with USC having transitioned to the Big Ten, Lincoln Riley has hit even more of a rut, with the same old story carrying the narrative: an elite offense having to carry a below average defense. Caleb Williams has been replaced by another great talent in Jayden Maiava, who has proven to be yet another successful Riley project. Still, in order for USC to win the big games, they need balance.

While this week’s road trip to Penn State looks much easier now that the Nittany Lions are reeling, this game has a coaching matchup that should be really intriguing. Both Lincoln Riley and Matt Campbell know each other well from their Big 12 coaching days, with Riley sporting a 4-2 record against his old/new rival. Still, the last time these two teams played each other, it was an instant classic at the Coliseum with Penn State the victors in an important game for the CFP race. This time, Riley hopes that the Nittany Lions are just a stepping stone along USC’s potential path to their first ever CFP bid.

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This article originally appeared on Nittany Lions Wire: A quick glance at USC head coach Lincoln Riley