LOS ANGELES — During three seasons spent as the architect of USC's offense, Graham Harrell went to great lengths to reassure fans his Air Raid could generate a capable run game. Despite that insistence, USC never got it going on the ground with Harrell at the helm. His tenure as offensive coordinator saw the Trojans collectively average fewer than four yards per carry, good for one of the worst rushing stretches in school history.
Lincoln Riley rose up through the same system, with deep roots in the same coaching tree. Like Harrell, who's now at West Virginia, Riley learned under Mike Leach, one of the Air Raid's earliest adopters, at Texas Tech.
But when the new USC coach was asked to explain his system earlier this spring, he wondered aloud if the label often ascribed to his offense even fit at all.
