USC AD Raises $100M Concern While Admitting ‘Frustration’ as Lincoln Riley Faces Growing Pressure

Things are getting completely wild on the west-coast side of college sports, and USC’s Athletic Director, Jennifer Cohen, kept it completely real in an exclusive, wide-ranging chat with Ryan Kartje of The Los Angeles Times. She didn’t hold back at all when addressing the heavy cloud of fan backlash, social media drama, and general “doom and gloom” currently hanging over the Trojans’ football program.

When asked about Lincoln Riley’s 2025’s football campaign, and falling just short of playoff expectations, Cohen openly admitted that this past year has been deeply frustrating:

“There’s no doubt that this last year’s been frustrating, and that’s because we tried to fly a plane and build a plane at the same time. So it’s certainly not going swimmingly, right?” Cohen said to the LA Times last week.

She explained that the athletic department has basically been trying to do all – rebuilding their entire defensive coaching staff, shifting their recruiting philosophy, and constructing a giant, state-of-the-art physical facility- at once while complying with ever-stopping world of NIL. Not to mention, it has never been more expensive to run a major athletic department. The cost of building a top football roster has now climbed past $40 million for this season alone.

While costs explode across college athletics, USC AD Jen Cohen tells @latimes that athletic revenue at USC is up 60%, sponsorship deals have doubled and donors have grown the department’s coffers by over 700% since she took over as AD https://t.co/VE9jdiVwq4

— Ryan Kartje (@RyanKartje) May 31, 2026

A big reason for that is because of the rise of NIL deals, collective fundraising, and their revenue-sharing payments for athletes.

Things are moving so fast that the reporter even asked her about a nightmare future scenario: what happens if roster costs keep ballooning to $50 million, $60 million, or even a mind-boggling $100 million for a single year of football?

“Hopefully not,” Cohen said. “We’ve gotta match roster spends with revenues and, and, and, and how we run a business,” Cohen said. “I don’t think there’s one simple answer to this, and I do think that we are at a point where we’ve got to figure out as an industry, how do we do this in a smart way and not just let our competitiveness get the best of us? But that’s hard when football winning is the only way that you pay your bills.”

The ultimate trap, as Cohen pointed out, is that winning football games is pretty much the only way a university can generate enough cash to pay its bills, creating a crazy loop where you have to spend wildly just to keep the lights on.

The silver lining for the Trojans is that their business side is absolutely booming right now. Cohen shared that USC’s overall athletic department revenue has jumped by an impressive 60% over the last three years. Even crazier, donor contributions directly to the Trojan Athletic Fund have skyrocketed by an unbelievable 707%.

This amount of money gives USC a huge advantage. It allows the program to handle a $40 million roster budget better than most schools in the country.

In the end, Cohen made it clear that USC’s expectations are not changing.

The school’s betting all-in on Lincoln Riley: roster funding and a new football facility that is almost finished. End of the day, college football may be changing. But the goal stays the same: USC is expected to make deep College Football Playoff runs and compete for national championships every year.

Can they make it, though?

Lincoln Riley’s expedition to not get fired

USC absolutely has the talent to make a deep playoff run this season, but their brutal schedule means they will have to survive a weekly gauntlet to get there.

The biggest reason for optimism is that USC’s recruiting has been on absolute fire. They managed to secure a historic high school recruiting class, landing nine top-100 players in the country. Incredible true freshmen like tight end Mark Bowman and wide receiver Trent Mosley are already turning heads in practice and are expected to make an instant impact on the Day 1, perhaps.

Even better, Riley finally fixed the team’s biggest historical weakness by bringing in legendary Gary Patterson now. For the first time in Riley’s SoCal career, you could expect top 15-20 defense without a doubt.

However, the path to the national championship is going to be an absolute nightmare because their schedule is ranked as one of the hardest in the entire country. USC has to host premier powerhouse teams like Oregon and Ohio State at the Coliseum, while also playing incredibly tough road games at Penn State, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

The good news is that USC does not have to be perfect because its schedule is so tough. Many college football experts believe that if the Trojans can go 4-2 in their six biggest games and win the rest, a 10-2 record should be enough to earn a spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff.

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