{"id":695611,"date":"2026-06-10T12:51:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T12:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/695611\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T12:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T12:51:15","slug":"usc-paid-lincoln-riley-nearly-12-million-in-lackluster-2024-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/695611\/","title":{"rendered":"USC paid Lincoln Riley nearly $12 million in lackluster 2024 season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

His 7-6 record at USC<\/a> in 2024 would go down as the worst mark of Lincoln Riley<\/a>\u2019s career as a head football coach. But in his third and rockiest year at the helm of the Trojans, Riley was still compensated like one of the kings of the sport.<\/p>\n

Riley was paid more than $11.8 million in total compensation during the fiscal year 2024, according to USC\u2019s latest federal tax returns, which were obtained by The Times. That total includes a $100,000 bonus and $10.4 million in base pay, believed to be more than all but three college football coaches that season: Georgia\u2019s Kirby Smart, Clemson\u2019s Dabo Swinney and Ohio State\u2019s Ryan Day. All three have won a national title.<\/p>\n

For Riley, his pay in 2024 marks just a slight increase from the 2023 season, when USC paid Riley more than $11.5 million in total compensation. The coach\u2019s base pay increased by $145,143 between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, slightly less than it rose following his debut season in 2022 ($168,000).<\/p>\n

At least in 2024, USC only had to pay one football coach, after paying Clay Helton a combined $9 million not to coach over the two previous years.<\/p>\n

The school would, however, have to pay up a bit to bring in a new men\u2019s basketball coach.<\/p>\n

After Andy Enfield left to coach Southern Methodist after the 2023-24 season, USC shelled out more than $6.1 million total in 2024 to lure coach Eric Musselman<\/a> from Arkansas, according to the university\u2019s latest federal tax records. One million of that was paid to Arkansas to buy out Musselman\u2019s contract.<\/p>\n

That puts Musselman at a reported $5.1 million in total pay and benefits from the school in 2024, according to the school\u2019s tax records. That total likely includes additional costs unique to a coaching change. But altogether, it would have ranked Musselman among the highest-paid coaches in the Big Ten for the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n

Musselman didn\u2019t exactly deliver on that investment during the 2024-25 season, as USC bottomed out during its first Big Ten men\u2019s basketball slate. The Trojans finished 17-18 and 7-13 in the Big Ten.<\/p>\n

After including her information in tax forms from the previous year, the university did not disclose compensation figures from 2024 for USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen<\/a>. Federal tax returns filed last May had credited Cohen with more than $3 million in reportable compensation in her first year on the job, $1 million of which was used to buy out Cohen from her Washington contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His 7-6 record at USC in 2024 would go down as the worst mark of Lincoln Riley\u2019s career…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[301446,65909,399,78517,301445,59167,301444,398,396,397,22120,17164,3858,5190,99,89747,110918,95080,6671,7813],"class_list":["post-695611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-bad-mark","tag-base-pay","tag-football","tag-head-football-coach","tag-late-federal-tax-return","tag-lincoln-riley","tag-musselman","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-new-man","tag-record","tag-school","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-total","tag-total-compensation","tag-trojans","tag-university","tag-usc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695611","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=695611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}