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Not-So-Merry Go-Rounds

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Times Staff Writer

The firing-hiring season has come around again.

Mike Riley’s phone is not ringing.

“Thank goodness,” he said, laughing. “I’m not going to be involved, and it feels so good.”

There are those who can ride the coaching carousel with ease, maneuvering through the maze of interviews and offers, and then there is Riley. His pony acted more like a bucking bronco, throwing him again and again.

Finally -- almost miraculously, really -- he landed back at the very place he believes he should be, exactly where he started, at Oregon State.

“It has been an absolute blast,” Riley said. “There have been some hard times and some good times, but that’s football. College football, being back on a college campus, I’d have to say this is where I belong.”

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On the way back to the Beavers after leaving to coach the San Diego Chargers in 1999, Riley stumbled through the courtship dance with at least half a dozen schools, his timing always a step off the beat.

“I don’t do it very well, obviously,” he said.

He was offered the Alabama job, and turned it down.

He was a leading candidate at USC and UCLA, and ended up at neither.

It had looked for a time as if Riley might become the Trojan coach, after Mike Bellotti and Dennis Erickson had bowed out and before Pete Carroll was hired three years ago.

But while the Chargers hesitated to give their permission for USC to talk to Riley, and Riley wondered what he should do, Carroll emerged as the favorite, Riley became an also-ran, and the Chargers fired him the next season anyway.

“The weirdest deal ever was USC. Who knows how that would have turned out?” he said.

Riley said that the job was never offered but that a meeting was being set up for him to talk to USC President Steven Sample when he balked because he still didn’t have the permission of Charger President Dean Spanos.

Daryl Gross, the senior associate athletic director in charge of the USC search, said all the top candidates were to meet Sample and that Carroll moved ahead of Riley with strong interviews.

“We were very serious about Mike if Pete had not taken the job,” Gross said. “Mike is a hell of a guy and a hell of a ball coach, as good as anybody in the country.”

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Now, three seasons later, Riley brings 7-4 Oregon State to play Carroll’s Trojans on Saturday at the Coliseum in what might be the final obstacle between USC and a trip to the national championship game.

“It’s a daunting task,” Riley said. “They’re awfully good. They have great talent and they’ve done a great job of coaching.... Obviously, it’s been a great match.”

Finding his own match was no easy matter for Riley.

This is a coach who did the unthinkable, turning down Alabama, his alma mater, in hopes of getting the UCLA job last year, only to have one of those awful what-have-I-done moments when UCLA hired Karl Dorrell instead.

“That was like a sock in the stomach,” he said. “It took my wind away. Not literally, but ... I thought I had a real good chance, not from anything anybody told me, but I thought it was a good fit.”

(And imagine, if Riley had said yes to Alabama, Mike Price probably would still be at Washington State.)

As for Riley’s miscalculation in his job search, it wasn’t even the first time he had made that mistake.

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Riley was a candidate to replace Tyrone Willingham at Stanford two seasons ago when Indiana offered him its job.

Riley passed, hoping to work on the West Coast, only to watch Stanford hire Buddy Teevens.

By the time he lost out on the UCLA job, Riley was ready to throw up his arms.

“I kind of rolled the dice and tried to get Alabama to wait. They didn’t buy it, so I had to pass. Then when I didn’t get that [UCLA] job, I really started to wonder,” he said.

“It was rough for a time, but it wasn’t like I was without a job,” said Riley, who was working as an assistant for the New Orleans Saints. “It wasn’t like I was doing something I didn’t enjoy doing. I liked the Saints. I was thinking that was going to be what I did for my career.”

Then came the day last February when he was on the phone with former Charger executive Billy Devaney, now scouting for the San Francisco 49ers.

“Somebody came in the office and said [the 49ers had] just hired Dennis Erickson,” Riley said.

“I told him, ‘I’ve got to go.’ I called [Oregon State Athletic Director Bob De Carolis] and said, ‘I don’t want to be premature, but I don’t want to be late.’ ”

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With that, Riley was soon hired to replace Erickson, who had replaced Riley when he’d left after two seasons.

He returned so quickly, a handful of his old players were still there, receiver James Newson among them.

“I never really resolved leaving,” Riley said. “It doesn’t mean I regret it.

“From the time I got fired in San Diego, I was looking to try to get a college job. I was hoping it would be on the West Coast. I just feel like I fit here. I never dreamed it could be OSU again. Having left like I did, I wouldn’t ever have expected to come back.”

He is back, though, and he has made good on one last item on his resume. The Beavers are going to finish with a winning record.

Though Riley won two Grey Cups as coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Canadian Football League, until now he had not had a winning record as a college or NFL coach. (He did, however, help lay the foundation for an Oregon State team Erickson turned into an 11-1 power that beat Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl in his second season.)

His record with the Chargers was 14-34, 1-15 the year he talked with USC but was so uncertain about what breaking his contract would mean.

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“At the time, I didn’t know if I went to SC if I had to pay back the contract. I was pretty naive,” Riley said. “I didn’t have a lawyer.”

If he’s right about the situation at Oregon State, he won’t ever need one again.

“I almost shake when the job season rolls around,” Riley said.

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