After being proven wrong about USC's prospects, Paul Finebaum offered a mea culpa to Lincoln Riley for his harsh criticism. Credit: ESPN’s ‘First Take’
By Sam Neumann on

After USC knocked off LSU 27-20 in Week 1, former Trojans quarterback Matt Leinart wondered aloud to his nearly 100k followers on X what type of excuses Paul Finebaum would make now.

Finebaum has notoriously been uber-critical of USC head coach Lincoln Riley. He spent the better part of the preseason going in on the Trojan’s third-year head coach. Not only did the ESPN college football analyst predict that Riley could be a historic crash and burn at USC, but he got into a heated debate with Chris Russo over that pointed criticism.

And it wasn’t long after that that he tried to float Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders to Southern Cal.

So it didn’t come as a surprise when Finebaum said this past Friday, “I think it’s gonna be about Lincoln Riley, his inability to turn the corner at Southern Cal. He’s not playing an elite team in LSU — he’s playing a good team. But I still think LSU is gonna be good enough in that primetime game from Vegas to slow down Southern Cal.

“I worry very much about Southern Cal’s defense. It’s been an issue that has haunted Lincoln Riley’s career both at OU and now at Southern Cal, and I think it’s gonna continue on Sunday night.”

It didn’t continue on Sunday night, and Finebaum was forced to eat some major crow on ESPN’s airwaves Monday. After going in on both Brian Kelly and Dabo Swinney on Get Up, he offered a mea culpa to the USC head coach on the Labor Day edition of First Take.

“Listen, every Southern Cal fan in America has every single right to come after me and do it, just bury me,” he said Monday. “Not only what I said Friday here, Molly, but what I said here in July. Yes, it was easy to go after Lincoln Riley because he made it easy. Because this guy has blown a number of titles at Oklahoma with Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks and the same last year (with Caleb Williams).

“But, he went out in the offseason, and he found a solution to his problem. My hat is off to him. I compliment him because he looked like the elite coach last night. He looked like the coach of the future, not the coach of the past, who inherited a great situation at Oklahoma and took his best player with him to Southern California.

“So, Trojan fans, you should celebrate. You’re back — at least for the time being. You don’t have an easy path, but you have overcome one of the big obstacles of this season, and that’s knocking off LSU.”

[First Take]

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann