months” and they had “way more important things than that right now.”

Still, it marks another chapter in USC football’s long and complicated history with the NCAA. It’s particularly poor timing, too, as USC sits mired at 4-5 overall and 2-5 in its first season in the Big Ten Conference, with heat intensifying on Riley to inspire faith in a three-year rebuild that hasn’t amounted to lofty expectations created from his 2021 arrival to Southern California.

“Since learning of potential violations related to our football program in May 2023, USC has worked cooperatively with the NCAA enforcement staff and with the Committee on Infractions, as we identified and acknowledged violations, issued corrective measures, and submitted a negotiated resolution in a timely fashion that was approved by the Committee,” USC athletic director Jen Cohen said in a statement.

“We remain committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical behavior and integrity in our athletic programs.”

That May, as the Committee on Infractions wrote in their resolution, the governing body received information that a USC special-teams analyst had “provided instruction” to at least one player during the spring of 2023. USC confirmed, in a detailed self-report filed back a few days later, that the same analyst had “engaged in brief five- to 10-minute informal, unscheduled meetings” with two players who’d requested review of their practice film.

USC’s special teams analyst in 2022 and 2023 was Ryan Dougherty, who’d previously coached with Riley on staffs at Oklahoma and East Carolina. In 2024, Dougherty was officially named USC’s special-teams coordinator by Riley, amid a slew of title-changes brought on by the NCAA’s changing rules around the role of coaching analysts.

“The NCAA has been behind the times so far on that rule,” Riley said in August, “so it’s great that you now can use the people on your staff how you feel is the best way. A lot of people taking more active roles ... yeah, it already feels a lot different in the way we’re using our staff.”

The key, there, was the NCAA removing restrictions on countable coaches in summer 2024, permitting any staff member to provide “technical and tactical instruction” to athletes, as written in a release over the summer. Previously, however, staffers labeled as “analysts” weren’t able to work with players directly — the basis for USC’s violations as investigated by the NCAA.

In subsequent months, USC found four additional offensive and defensive analysts had assisted in drills, handled equipment and delivered “instruction and feedback” to players in spring 2023, according to the resolution. Another review of 2022’s spring and fall practice periods revealed six more USC analysts had done the same in the previous year. Ultimately, the NCAA found USC “exceeded the permissible number of countable coaches” by six in 2021-22 and 2022-23.

Riley, ultimately, was highlighted in the investigation but faced no real personal consequence. In January 2023, the NCAA instituted changes to their infractions process with the concept of “head coach responsibility rules,” which largely put forth that head coaches should be held accountable for the violations of their staff. Penalties are issued from that baseline, as the Committee on Infractions determines the extent a head coach was aware of those violations.

The extent to which a head coach would be aware of violations, under those NCAA rules, are described as “aggravating factors.” General awareness and promotion of compliance, for example, is defined as a “mitigating factor.” The NCAA ruled, in the release, that Riley had committed no aggravating factors and had taken several mitigating factors — involving acceptance of responsibility and expediting the investigation — and therefore wasn’t subject to suspension or harsher penalty.

USC’s probation will last through Nov. 11, 2025, toward the tail end of their second season in the Big Ten.