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WATCH: ESPN's Paul Finebaum Destroys Lincoln Riley on First Take

The talk show host said the former Sooners coach has been a "disaster" at USC and said Riley "ran away" from the SEC.

John E. Hoover

Paul Finebaum
Paul Finebaum / Screenshot
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DALLAS — Paul Finebaum is no fan of Lincoln Riley.

ESPN’s outspoken show host and voice of the SEC, Finebaum executed an all-time takedown of USC’s head coach this week during an appearance on “First Take.”

“I think he has an enormous amount to prove because quite frankly, I think he’s been a disaster,” Finebaum said.

Finebaum took the conversation back to 2021, when Riley was still coaching at Oklahoma and finished his OU tenure with two tepid road losses at Baylor and Oklahoma State before leaving the night after the loss in Stillwater.

“Let’s go back three years,” Finebaum said. “Oklahoma and Texas joining the SEC, it was announced at this moment in time, and what did Lincoln Riley do? He ran away.”

Finebaum expounded on the idea that Riley’s departure from OU was a reaction to the Sooners joining the SEC five months earlier.  

“He did not want to deal with the Southeastern Conference at OU, and he took what he thought was an easier course, so he goes out to Southern Cal, he takes Caleb Williams with him,” Finebaum said. “Good first year, but since then, everything has gone wrong.”

On Tuesday, OU coach Brent Venables referenced the team that Riley left him at the end of the 2021 season as a hurdle for why the Sooners dropped off to a 6-7 record in his first season.

"Within the first 15 months that I got to Oklahoma, we lost 75 scholarship players, 40 of them were on defense, within the first little over a year," Venables said. "And we weren't, as I look back at it ... after Coach Riley left, we weren't able to ... our roster was not prepared for the exodus, if you will. 

"And, you know, I think that kind of goes without saying, but we had a lot of work to do in developing into competitive depth."

Finebaum doubled down on the Trojans’ precipitous fall from 2022 to 2023, when Williams won the Heisman Trophy and guided USC to an 11-3 record and Pac-12 runner-up finish to an 8-5 record in 2023. 

“I thought last year was one of the worst coaching jobs I’ve ever seen,” Finebaum said. “Quite frankly, had I been the athletic director, I would have fired Lincoln Riley because he’s yet to show, after many years as a head coach, he knows anything about defense. He’s gone through defensive coordinators. He just simply couldn’t handle it. 

“And now things are going to be five times worse in the Big Ten. On top of that, a number of his top players are bailing out. This is a guy who owned LA for about a half a minute, and quite frankly, next year at this time, I think he’ll likely be an assistant in the NFL — if he’s that lucky.”

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John E. Hoover

JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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