Lincoln Riley as Clemson offensive coordinator would’ve been ‘awesome,’ he says

Last month, Dabo Swinney and the Clemson football team made a splashy hire by poaching star offensive coordinator Garrett Riley from TCU after a single season.

A decade earlier, could they have done the same with his older brother?

Speaking in late January after Clemson made Garrett Riley the third-highest-paid offensive coordinator in the country, current Southern Cal coach Lincoln Riley essentially volunteered that, yes, if timelines matched up during his five-year stint at ECU, he could’ve been a Tiger.

“I can remember when I was at East Carolina, the last couple of years there, kind of being in that part of the country, thinking, ‘Man, that’d be awesome if something opened up at Clemson and I could go run the offense there for Dabo,’ ” he told Jon Blau of The (Charleston) Post and Courier. “Those type of opportunities don’t come up and they’re hard to get.”

Even though such a partnership with Swinney never materialized — and never will, considering Lincoln Riley is already six years into his head coaching career at age 39 — the former Oklahoma coach’s comments made for an interesting bit of revisionist history.

A young Lincoln Riley got his wish of a Clemson offensive coordinator opening in December 2014 when Chad Morris, Clemson’s OC of three seasons, left to coach SMU.

At the time, Riley was wrapping up his fifth season as a record-shattering offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach and Mike Leach coaching disciple under Ruffin McNeill at East Carolina.

But it’s hard to argue with the developments of the next two months. Swinney promoted wide receivers Jeff Scott and running backs coach Tony Elliott to replace Morris as co-offensive coordinators ahead of the 2014 Orange Bowl, and that internal move netted Clemson two national championships and Scott and Elliott their own head coaching jobs down the line.

Meanwhile, looking for an offensive spark after losing to none other than Clemson in the 2014 Orange Bowl, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops hired Riley as his new offensive coordinator in January 2015. Within two years, he was the head coach of the Sooners at age 33.

Riley won four Big 12 titles, reached three College Football Playoffs and won 85% of his games in five seasons at Oklahoma before leaving for Southern Cal in November 2021. (The Sooners replaced him with longtime Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables.)

Clemson’s major 2023 staff change

Swinney and Riley, whose teams met in a 2015 Clemson-Oklahoma CFP semifinal, have long had a mutual respect for each other. During last week’s introductory news conference for Garrett Riley, Swinney said he sought Lincoln Riley’s input during his secretive OC search.

The longtime Clemson coach said he knew Lincoln Riley would “shoot me straight and speak in confidence” when he called in early January to vet three or four potential candidates to replace his then-offensive coordinator, Brandon Streeter, who he’d eventually fire.

One of them, of course, was Garrett Riley, whose No. 2 TCU team was preparing for the College Football Playoff national championship game against No. 1 Georgia in Phoenix.

After speaking with Lincoln, Swinney last week said: “I found out there might be some interest (from Garrett). Then I kinda put a hold on everything and just said, ‘Well, I’ll wait til after this game and I’ll reach out and go from there.’ And that’s what we did.”

In hiring Garrett Riley, Clemson and Swinney are trying to tap into the full potential of talented sophomore quarterback Cade Klubnik and return to the CFP, which they have missed in consecutive seasons after six straight appearances from 2015 to 2020.

Across the country, Lincoln Riley is also trying to reach the CFP; Southern Cal, led by Heisman-winning quarterback and potential 2024 No. 1 draft pick Caleb Williams, was a Pac-12 championship game win short of reaching the four-team field in Riley’s first season.

DraftKings currently gives Clemson (+1,200) and Southern Cal (+1,500) the fifth and sixth best odds to win the 2023 national championship behind Georgia (+275), Alabama (+500), Michigan (+800) and Ohio State (+800).

Lincoln Riley told the Post and Courier he’d welcome a potential Clemson-Southern Cal playoff matchup — which would pit his Trojans against a program that, coincidentally, now employs his younger brother at the same offensive coordinator position he once coveted.

“I talked to Coach Swinney about that,” Lincoln Riley told the paper. “We’ve already joked about that. So yeah, that would be perfect. We’ll both take it right now. Promise ya.”