Injected into the highest 4 of the most recent College Football Playoff Rankings are tales of redemption, turnarounds, sacrifice and — within the case of Georgia — a doable nationwide championship protection. No one is speaking in regards to the chilly calls.
That can be the one TCU coach Sonny Dykes positioned to Garrett Riley in January 2020. If Riley’s final identify sounds acquainted, effectively, it ought to. As the Horned Frogs offensive coordinator, Riley is the lesser-known youthful brother of USC coach Lincoln Riley.
They are linked by more than DNA. They are twins in philosophy, each important branches on Mike Leach’s Air Raid tree.
“Just kind of always [glad to be] a part of Leach’s tree, kind of being associated with him,” Garrett advised CBS Sports. “Coach Dykes was searching for a man at SMU, and I used to be at Appalachian State [in 2019].”
There was additionally the chilly name that former Kansas coach David Beaty made to Garrett 4 years earlier. At the time, Riley was East Carolina’s large receivers coach.
“I was actually looking for an Air Raid guy, so I called [Lincoln],” Beaty recalled.
At the time, Lincoln Riley had simply accomplished his first season as Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator and was nonetheless a comparatively unknown assistant.
“After we went through a few guys, Lincoln said, ‘All those guys are good, but the best one you could hire, honestly, is my brother.’ … We hired [Garrett] the next day,” Beaty defined.
Speak on the telephone with Lincoln and Garrett, every of whom have helped information their respective groups to inside a recreation of a College Football Playoff berth, and you’ll be able to’t inform them aside. The brothers communicate with a clipped, no-nonsense West Texas accent. They each get proper to the purpose with out a lot elaboration.
Heck, communicate in individual with Lincoln and Garrett, and they could as effectively be twins regardless of truly being separated by six years. Garrett, 33, is in his third yr as an offensive coordinator; Lincoln, 39, is the architect behind 4 Big 12 championships, three playoff appearances and now one of essentially the most important turnarounds in current reminiscence at USC.
Come Sunday afternoon they may be recreation planning in opposition to each other.
“I know there is a possibility in this deal. Who friggin’ knows?” Garrett stated. “We’re not wasting any energy on that.”
Nor ought to they. The Rileys are usually not the most recent to hold the Air Raid ahead. The ‘unfold’ is unfold everywhere in the nation. Still, they may be essentially the most high-profile utilizers of it in the intervening time.
The Rileys are the primary brothers to refine the Air Raid to this stage whereas chasing a playoff berth in the identical season, and their path up to now is uniquely parallel. Both have been Texas Tech quarterbacks. Both have been assistants at ECU. Both have been FBS place coaches of their mid-20s. Lincoln turned a head coach at 34; Garrett’s profession is trending that method.
On Saturday, Garrett will be part of Lincoln as having coached in a Big 12 Championship Game.
“My wife and I were talking [about it] after our last game,” Garrett recalled. “When you actually start to think about it, I went as a spectator just to support Lincoln [when Oklahoma was in the Big 12 Championship Game]. I was thinking, ‘Damn, it’d be cool coaching in this one day.'”
USC and TCU have rebounded from sub-.500 information in 2021 to playoff competition in 2022. USC is third in common scoring; TCU is fourth, additionally main the Big 12 in complete offense. The top-rated quarterbacks within the Pac-12 (Caleb Williams) and the Big 12 (Max Duggan) are coached by the Riley brothers.
USC’s Williams is the Heisman Trophy frontrunner; Duggan is on monitor to get a Heisman invite, at the least. Their seasons have been so strong, it is doable TCU and USC might lose and nonetheless find yourself within the CFP (much less probably for the Trojans).
“I was just talking to a guy the other day and realized how incredible it is that these two coaches have their first-year teams about to make the College Football Playoff,” stated Beaty, now an assistant within the USFL. “By the way, the world better take notice of the young one because he is special just like his brother.”
At Kansas, the place Garrett labored his method up from analyst to quarterbacks coach to tight ends/fullback coach, he dealing with his brother 3 times when the Jayhawks battled the Sooners. Then Beaty and his employees have been fired following the 2018 season. After a yr at App State, Garrett joined SMU. There he discovered limitless freedom. Dykes doesn’t hover. He just isn’t a helicopter head coach.
What you have seen is unprecedented creativity at TCU. Duggan is having a profession yr. Running again Zach Evans was misplaced within the portal to Ole Miss, so up stepped Kendre Miller with a 1,200-yard season. Quentin Johnston got here out nowhere to turn into the Big 12’s third-leading go catcher with 49 receptions.Â
“Sonny is kind of the master of being even keel, not making things too big,” Garrett stated of his boss.
Too late, maybe. Lincoln gained the Broyles Award as assistant coach of the yr in 2015. Garrett is a finalist in 2022. As talked about, if the CFP Rankings change just a bit, present No. 4 USC could possibly be taking part in present No. 3 TCU in a single of the nationwide semifinals. Or if you wish to dream, they might meet for a nationwide championship.
This storyline would blow up greater than each groups’ offenses.Â
USC has ascended to its rightful spot in Los Angeles, the Pac-12 and on the nationwide scene. TCU is the upstart. Its final outright convention championship got here in 2011 as members of the Mountain West. Its one and solely nationwide championship got here in 1938.
That’s a great distance from the coaches’ native Muleshoe, Texas, the place the choices have been few.
“You kind of have two choices,” Garrett stated. “You were going to work, be in some [agriculture] somehow, or you were going to play sports.”
And in order that they did — collectively, aside, one following the opposite to Texas Tech. In 2002, Lincoln was a Red Raiders walk-on QB. Garrett adopted in 2008-09 earlier than transferring to Stephen F. Austin.
“I was just an OK high school player,” Garrett stated. “My decision was to go to a small school and probably have a better chance to play. Texas Tech was on the cutting edge at the time.
“Coach Leach actually taught me loads in regards to the recreation. His method of pondering was simply superior. Things that are not something about soccer — the schematics and simplicity, the way in which we function, the way in which we apply.”
Garrett known as Lincoln “kind of a mother hen a little bit, kind of an old soul. … Obviously a guy I looked up to.”
That’s the place more than bloodlines merge. The teaching half of the story traces its roots again to round 2009. Leach had simply been fired at Texas Tech. At the time, veteran assistant Ruffin McNeill was elevated to interim coach. Donnie Duncan then interjected himself.
You most likely do not know Duncan, a beautiful, lovely, considerate man. He was the long-time Oklahoma athletic director who, on the time, was Big 12 director of soccer operations. Duncan noticed a budding expertise in Lincoln, Texas Tech’s WR coach on the time. He was already near McNeill, who turned ECU’s head coach in 2010 and took Lincoln with him as offensive coordinator.
Duncan died in March 2016, 15 months earlier than Riley was named because the alternative for legendary Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops.
“Donnie told [Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione], ‘You better not lose Lincoln Riley. He’s going to be one of the best,'” recalled John Underwood, a former Big 12 assistant commissioner.
After Duncan’s demise, Riley’s OU visor featured the stitched initials, “D.D.”
“That’s how much respect they had for each other,” Underwood famous.
Lincoln is thought most just lately for having the transfer portal wired.
“I remember having a conversation with someone before the season started,” Lincoln advised CBS Sports. “‘Do you think some people view this [transfer initiative] as an experiment?’ Probably so. If I was on the outside, not a part of it, I’d be watching it and kind of seeing how it unfolded.”
So far, it has resulted in USC grabbing the No. 1 switch class (20 new gamers) to energy the West Coast’s greatest program again into the massive time. Watch out: The subsequent switch window opens Monday.
The greatest rationalization for all of it could be Lincoln telling CBS Sports over the summer time that he at all times had a hankering for the West Coast. His resolution to go away Oklahoma for USC shocked the school soccer world, however his brother noticed the indicators.
“He’s always had an inkling with just a little bit of curiosity for the West Coast,” Garrett stated. “I always gave him crap when we were kids. It made me mad. It kind of still does. He would pull for the Lakers. I’m like, ‘We’re in Muleshoe, Texas, and you’re pulling for the Lakers?!'”
Meanwhile, Garrett has play-calling wired.
At SMU, he had coached quarterbacks Shane Buechele and Tanner Mordecai to a mixed 7,118 yards passing and 64 touchdowns throughout two seasons. Duggan misplaced the TCU QB battle within the fall to Chandler Morris. Well, there’s that connection once more. Both Mordecai and Morris transferred from Lincoln’s Oklahoma. Then Morris was injured within the TCU opener and Duggan, a veteran of 32 appearances with the Frogs, simply slid into place.
TCU has come from behind to win seven of its 12 games. The season kicked into one other gear on Oct. 1 when the Frogs smacked Lincoln’s previous crew, 55-24. Duggan threw 11 TDs this season earlier than tossing his first choose in opposition to Kansas.
“You’ve got the initial wave when you go through spring and fall camp and you’re like, ‘Well, we got some really good dudes. … Shoot, we could pretty good. Probably the first real glimpse of that was after the OU game.”
The Riley brothers have allow us to in for this season’s transient look into their lives and careers collectively. The finish of the their story is nowhere in sight.
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