{"id":379381,"date":"2025-12-31T07:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T07:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379381\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T07:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T07:35:07","slug":"brady-quinn-blasts-lincoln-riley-for-comments-about-notre-dame-vs-usc-rivalry-this-is-a-pr-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379381\/","title":{"rendered":"Brady Quinn blasts Lincoln Riley for comments about Notre Dame vs. USC rivalry: ‘This is a PR campaign’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the public back-and-forth between Notre Dame<\/a> and USC<\/a>\u00a0about the decision to pause their storied rivalry, former Fighting Irish quarterback Brady Quinn<\/a> made his thoughts clear. He took direct aim at Trojans coach Lincoln Riley<\/a> regarding the decision.<\/p>\n

Quinn gave a passionate, 6-minute response about the temporary end of the series during an appearance on FOX Sports Radio<\/a> on Tuesday. He called out Riley\u2019s record at USC, comparing it to his predecessor Clay Helton<\/a> \u2013 Riley is 35-17 while Helton went 45-27 \u2013 while also noting his one victory over Notre Dame in four attempts.<\/p>\n

In addition, Quinn recalled comments Riley previously made<\/a> about the future of the Notre Dame rivalry after the USC coach blamed the Irish<\/a> for failing to come to a deal. That\u2019s part of the reason why Quinn called out the Trojans regarding the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said this publicly. It\u2019s rich coming from the guy who basically questioned playing the game, in general, back in 2024,\u201d Quinn said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s rich coming from him because he couldn\u2019t beat Notre Dame, really, if you look at his record. I don\u2019t know. Is his record any better as a head coach at USC than Clay Helton\u2019s was? Hasn\u2019t won a conference championship, didn\u2019t win it in the Pac, hasn\u2019t won one in the Big Ten, never won a Rose Bowl, hasn\u2019t made the Playoff. He has a worse winning percentage as the head coach of SC than Clay Helton.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s funny to me, it\u2019s entertaining to me that you hear SC fans defend Lincoln Riley when in reality, he\u2019s been a worse version of the guy you ran out of your program. So you\u2019re defending these comments that he makes. Here\u2019s what\u2019s interesting about it is this is a PR campaign by Southern Cal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018He knew he could no longer compete with it\u2019<\/p>\n

Brady Quinn also recalled the rumor mill surrounding Riley while he was at Oklahoma<\/a>, where there was plenty of chatter about whether he would leave for LSU<\/a>. Of course, he did not, eventually choosing to take the USC job and replace Helton.<\/p>\n

But by opting not to leave for LSU, Quinn argued Riley was running from competition in the SEC. He said it\u2019s similar to what USC with the Notre Dame rivalry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go through the timeline of how this all started and why this rivalry no longer exists, it really started with Lincoln Riley and his inability to want to compete back when he was at Oklahoma,\u201d Quinn said. \u201cHad the chance to go to LSU. That didn\u2019t work out. Didn\u2019t want to go with Oklahoma to the SEC because he wouldn\u2019t. He knew they couldn\u2019t compete and he wouldn\u2019t compete. So he goes to the Pac-12 for easier, greener pastures, and he hasn\u2019t been able to win anything. Now, he tries to make it easier on himself by not playing one of the most storied rivalries, one of the reasons why you go to SC \u2026 one of the reasons why it made SC even relevant is that rivalry every year vs. Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this isn\u2019t coming from, like, a Notre Dame perspective on that. That\u2019s the truth. Whether Southern Cal people want to realize that or not, that game brought you to relevance because it\u2019s a storied rivalry [game]. Two programs who are competing for national championships throughout history of college football and have put as many players in the NFL as any in college football. \u2026 And he did away with it because he knew he could no longer compete with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brady Quinn: USC knew Notre Dame couldn\u2019t play 2026 game early<\/p>\n

One of the biggest points of contention around the Notre Dame-USC rivalry was when the game would be played. The Trojans reportedly pushed for it to be earlier in the year before Big Ten play, which led to the rallying cry from the Fighting Irish of, \u201cAnytime, anywhere.\u201d Lincoln Riley said this week Notre Dame went back on that mantra.<\/p>\n

However, Brady Quinn said USC put out a proposal it knew Notre Dame couldn\u2019t take because of dates already in place on the schedule. He doubled down on his stance that Riley was a factor in the decision not to play the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth of the matter is, they offered out a proposal that they knew Notre Dame wasn\u2019t going to be able to play because their current schedule for 2026 that\u2019s already set with some of those early dates, because SC wanted to play before conference play,\u201d Quinn said. \u201cAnd some of those dates already set. You can\u2019t move that already. They already had to move the Wisconsin<\/a> Lambeau Field game \u2013 that was back during COVID, I believe. So they had to have, like, a makeup through that. That was the reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been like Southern Cal said, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s play in 2026, 2027 on Mars,\u2019 and Notre Dame\u2019s like, \u2018We can\u2019t get there yet.\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018Well, I guess we can\u2019t do the series. I guess you\u2019ll guess you have to find someone else, then.\u2019 And if they cared so much about extending the rivalry, why only do it for two years? Why not just say, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019re gonna keep playing this in perpetuity. This is how it\u2019s gonna look.\u2019 It\u2019s because they don\u2019t want to play it anymore, because they got a head coach who knows he can\u2019t win it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid the public back-and-forth between Notre Dame and USC\u00a0about the decision to pause their storied rivalry, former Fighting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[185444,399,159791,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-379381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-brady-quinn-03-dublin-coffman","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-lincoln-riley-02-muleshoe","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}