5 more college coaches who could bolt for the NFL after Adam Schefter's warning

2. USC Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley

Until very recently, I would have had Lincoln Riley No. 1 with a bullet on this list. The offensive wunderkind head coach is now entering his third season at USC after spending the five before that at Oklahoma. He has led his team to the College Football Playoff three times before, but so far has never even won a semifinal. When the going gets tough, Riley gets going. He lives to cut corners as a coach.

Given that he is an offensive guru from Texas, it feels like an inevitability that Jerry Jones is going to hire him as the next head coach of the Dallas Cowboys as soon as Mike McCarthy fails once again. It will be like Kliff Kingsbury all over in the NFL, and Riley will be back in the college game in some capacity by the end of the decade. This is all about Riley not willing to do what it takes to win big.

He coaches at one of the greatest brands this sport has ever seen, but he would rather skip steps in recruitment by using the transfer portal than building it up the right way. While Riley says he wants to change, he picked the wrong role model for that in Michigan, who is probably not going to come out of the sign-stealing scandal okay. Riley to the NFL feels like a foregone conclusion at this point, y'all.

The question is if Riley will get to four or five years as the Trojans head coach before he bolts off.