Injected into the top four of the latest College Football Playoff Rankings are stories of redemption, turnarounds, sacrifice and — in the case of Georgia — a possible national championship defense. No one is talking about the cold calls.
That would be the one TCU coach Sonny Dykes placed to Garrett Riley in January 2020. If Riley’s last name sounds familiar, well, it should. As the Horned Frogs offensive coordinator, Riley is the lesser-known younger brother of USC coach Lincoln Riley.
They are linked by more than DNA. They are twins in philosophy, both significant branches on Mike Leach’s Air Raid tree.
“Just kind of always [glad to be] a part of Leach’s tree, kind of being associated with him,” Garrett told CBS Sports. “Coach Dykes was looking for a guy at SMU, and I was at Appalachian State [in 2019].”
There was also the cold call that former Kansas coach David Beaty made to Garrett four years earlier. At the time, Riley was East Carolina’s wide receivers coach.
“I was actually looking for an Air Raid guy, so I called [Lincoln],” Beaty recalled.
At the time, Lincoln Riley had just completed his first season as Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator and was still a relatively unknown assistant.
“After we went through a few guys, Lincoln said, ‘All those guys are good, but the best one you could hire, honestly, is my brother.’ … We hired [Garrett] the next day,” Beaty explained.
Speak on the phone with Lincoln and Garrett, each of whom have helped guide their respective teams to within a game of a College Football Playoff berth, and you can’t tell them apart. The brothers speak with a clipped, no-nonsense West Texas accent. They both get right to the point without much elaboration.
Heck, speak in person with Lincoln and Garrett, and they might as well be twins despite actually being separated by six years. Garrett, 33, is in his third year as an offensive coordinator; Lincoln, 39, is the architect behind four Big 12 championships, three playoff appearances and now one of the most significant turnarounds in recent memory at USC.
Come Sunday afternoon they might be game planning against one another.
“I know there is a possibility in this deal. Who friggin’ knows?” Garrett said. “We’re not wasting any energy on that.”
Nor should they. The Rileys are not the latest to carry the Air Raid forward. The ‘spread’ is spread all over the country. Still, they might be…
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