A Grip on Sports: With Riley’s hire at USC, the Pac-12 gets a boost – as does Mike Leach’s influence on it

A GRIP ON SPORTS • It’s almost as if the college football coaching train only slowed a bit in Pullman before speeding on to Los Angeles, Gainesville and beyond. That’s the way it is these days. You have to keep on schedule.

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• The Cougars had the national coaching spotlight to themselves for all of 40 seconds Saturday night. By the same time a day later, all eyes were on USC, which had just made a San Andreas-fault level hire, shaking much of the sport’s bedrock principles.

You just don’t lure away a highly successful coach from a blue-blood program, especially not a blue-blood program that is headed to the blue-blood conference. Lincoln Riley may not have been a Sooner for life – he began his college football career as one of Mike Leach’s Texas Tech guys – but he was ensconced in Norman, with the NFL the only possible entity that could lure him away. Right?

Wrong. No one knows Riley’s mind (as we said, he more-than-likely has some Leach traits hard-wired in there) but we do know some facts:

– The Sooners are not long for the Big 12, a conference they have dominated the past decade, whether Riley or Bob Stoops was the head coach;

– Riley’s Oklahoma teams made the college football playoffs three times;

– However, they never won a playoff game;

– To win a national title, Oklahoma was going to have to improve its defensive recruiting or get extremely lucky;

– Both will be easier at USC.

Most people feel Riley should be able to continue to recruit the same, or improved, offensive talent to Los Angeles. After all, some of his more high-profile recruits on that side of the ball have California connections. Attracting them to a school near Hollywood, in this NIL day-and-age, should be simpler than getting them to Norman. If Drew Timme can make commercials for Northern Quest, just what can a USC Heisman Trophy-favorite quarterback make for 20th Century Fox?

But to compete with the nation’s best (an euphemism for the SEC), Riley needs to have a defense that can hold up in big games. There has to be size and speed on that side of the ball (preferably both in one player) to match what SEC-caliber offenses can throw at you.

That hasn’t been the case in Oklahoma.

Give former Washington State defensive coordinator Alex Grinch – it has been reported he will join Riley in L.A. – those types of players, as he had his one year at Ohio State, and he can put together a defense capable of winning a national title. The Sooners didn’t get them. The Trojans will. Or, more precisely, the same guys recruiting to L.A. should. If not, then find assistants that can.

• Football is the highest profile college sport, followed pretty closely by basketball. But what’s third?

If it’s baseball, we’re confident in saying Washington State is in solid shape with Brian Greene as its head coach. If it’s soccer, same thing, as Todd Shulenberger has led the Cougars to the NCAA playoffs often in his seven years in Pullman (and was recently rewarded with another contract extension, as documented in our local briefs).

And if it’s volleyball? The Cougars are also more than solid.

Yesterday Washington State earned its sixth consecutive NCAA berth, a school record for consistency. Under Jen Greeny, the Cougars have become one of the top West Coast programs. They will face Northern Colorado in Waco on Thursday, with the winner slated to play host Baylor, if the fifth-seeded Bears get past Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

It’s not easy to win in the Pac-12 but Greeny has done it as a WSU player (when she was Jen Stinson) and as its coach year after year.

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Gonzaga: A trip to Hawaii was well worth it for the GU women. They won three consecutive games and a tournament title. Jim Allen has the particulars in this story covering their 68-49 win over host Hawaii. … The men get back it tonight, trying to bounce back from a rare regular season loss. (The Zags had won 32 consecutive non-postseason games since February of 2020.) They shouldn’t lose tonight, as they host Tarleton State. Jim Meehan has the preview as well as the key matchup. … Who should be ranked No. 1 this week? … Around the WCC, BYU has developed a new strength: rebounding.

WSU: An Apple Cup blowout is worth one more story, right? Well, we have Colton Clark’s piece to pass along. … And there is one from the Seattle Times. … Elsewhere in the Pac-12 and college football, Jon Wilner has his thoughts on Riley’s hire. … He also has this rewind in the Mercury News, written before the Riley news. … As one might expect, USC’s hire is the No. 1 news from Sunday. It has been met with unanimous support, even from some usually jaded folks. No one expected the Trojans to be able to pry such a successful coach from a successful program, so it’s hard to find fault. … It’s easy to find fault with a chant from the USC student section in the loss to BYU. The Trojans apologized. … No one is talking about a hot seat for Chip Kelly anymore. … It was a really awful year for Stanford. … It was also awful at Arizona, which is looking for a new defensive coordinator. … Arizona State handled its rivals easily in the Territorial Cup game. … The Pac-12 title game Friday is a rematch, as is often the case. But it also a rematch of a key game played just a week ago. Can underdog Oregon, ranked 10th this week, rebound and make up a huge deficit from the last meeting with 14th-ranked Utah? … Oregon State could have prevented the game with a win against the Ducks. … Shakeups are already happening. Colorado fired its offensive coordinator Sunday. … In basketball news, Colorado is atop the Pac-12 standings after opening the conference season with a win over visiting Stanford. … California actually won, handing visiting Fresno State its first defeat. … A new attitude is helping Arizona succeed. … What does slumping Oregon need to succeed?

EWU: Kendrick Bourne has been trading off one honor with former Eastern teammate Cooper Kupp throughout the NFL season. He’s this week’s main star of Jason Shoot’s column about local players in the league. … Former Eastern Washington sports information director Dave Cook has a review of Paul Delaney’s book about the Eastern football program. … Montana is expecting an improved Eastern defense Saturday. … Around the Big Sky, Montana State has won three consecutive basketball games.

Seahawks: If Seattle happens to win tonight in Washington against Taylor Heinicke and the Football Team, the Hawks will pull within a game of a playoff spot. Yep, the NFC is that weird.

Mariners: We’re guessing Seattle had made offers to at least one of the major free agents who signed yesterday.

Kraken: It seems as if the expansion team is starting to figure some things out.

Sounders: There are questions for Seattle this offseason. Three of them, in fact.

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• Jake Dickert was the youngest Pac-12 head football coach for about a day. Now Lincoln Riley, born 13 days later in 1983, will pass him for that honor. Until later …