LOS ANGELES — Sitting in his office last Thursday, two days before the call that might have shifted the course of USC’s season, head coach Lincoln Riley laughed when asked if the Trojans ad to adjust to the way games were officiated in the Big Ten.
“Yes,” Riley smiled, on a Zoom call with members of the media. “Yes. Very much so.”
He spoke, then, in nothing but positive light. The Big Ten, Riley said, let them play more. There were less “ticky-tack” fouls called, as he put it, a slight over-the-shoulder toss at the days of the former Pac-12. He said he appreciated the conference and appreciated officiating coordinator Bill Carrollo, and he made explicitly clear he preferred this way things had become.
“I don’t think I got fined there,” Riley grinned, after pausing for a few seconds. “We’ll see.”
It was tongue-in-cheek, then, because there was no level of discontent in that response that could have warranted any such punishment.
The discontent came exactly five days later.
On Tuesday, after wholeheartedly deflecting the topic following Saturday’s 24-17 loss to Minnesota, Riley took his place for media availability after USC’s practice with a lengthy off-the-cuff statement ahead of questions: there had been plenty of conversations with the Big Ten postgame, he said, on a “number of misses.”
Riley referenced a pass interference call on cornerback Jaylin Smith in the fourth quarter, a couple of plays before Minnesota scored a game-tying touchdown. There was a pass interference that “wasn’t called,” as Riley put it, potentially referring to an incomplete toss from quarterback Miller Moss to receiver Ja’Kobi Lane on a third-and-4 on USC’s ensuing drive. There was an intentional grounding call on Moss that same drive.
And then there was the mother of them all, the hotly debated game-winning fourth-and-goal score for Minnesota that was initially ruled a stop by USC’s defense – before being overturned and ruled a touchdown.
“Just to sum it up so we can all move on,” Riley said, “the explanation that we got on the last play was that they believed – or they thought that the runner had scored – and they felt like that was enough to overturn it.”
“I’ve not been given any explanation why we ignored the part of the rules that obviously state that, to overturn something, alright, that it has to be absolutely, completely clear-cut … that part was ignored,” Riley continued, “which is unfortunate for us.”
He was correct, in that the play was in no way clear-cut. With a minute left and and USC’s hopes riding entirely on a stop with the score tied on Saturday, Minnesota quarterback Max Brosmer took a snap and received a tush-push into a pileup at the goal line, officials on the field determining he had not reached the end zone. Any track of his body relative to the plane vanished, completely, in replay angles shown on a Big Ten Network broadcast. Brosmer even lost control of the football.
But after review, the call was overturned, and a minute later Minnesota students were streaking onto the field amid a 24-17 Golden Gophers victory.
When Riley called the conference, officials admitted they hadn’t known when the ball came out – and agreed video evidence to overturn the call wasn’t indisputable, the coach alleged Tuesday.
“Did he score?” Riley said. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I don’t – but I mean, that’s the problem, is, I mean, nobody knows.”
The Southern California News Group has reached out to a Big Ten representative for comment.
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The result will stand, asterisk or no, as another gut-wrenching last-minute loss on USC’s ledger. First, the late fourth-and-goal touchdown surrendered to Michigan; now this late fourth-and-goal touchdown surrendered to Minnesota. And Riley, on Tuesday, doubled down when asked about comments feeling like USC (3-2 overall, 1-2 Big Ten) was a “couple plays away” from being 5-0, a frequent point of rhetoric during the 2023 team’s collapse en route to a 7-5 regular season.
“Don’t feel like it,” Riley said, firmly. “We are.”
He made clear several times, though, that the final Minnesota call wasn’t a reason USC had lost. And his program simply can’t afford to stare too long in the rearview mirror, with fourth-ranked Penn State (5-0, 2-0) waltzing into the Coliseum on Saturday.
“I’m not the person, I don’t make excuses,” Riley said Tuesday. “I don’t allow our players to make excuses. I haven’t talked about it with our players. I know, I know everybody wants to just get our opinion on it so that we can all move on, and that’s why I wanted to address it.”
“But at the end of the day, we had plenty of opportunities to close out that football game, and not put it down to a fluke play.”
