Everything Lincoln Riley said Thursday morning ahead of USC's trip to Cal

Full transcript of Lincoln Riley's comments ...

How are you feeling, what was the start of the week like resting from home but communicating with the team, and is there a recovery timeline to when you'll feel 100 percent?

"Yeah, timeline on all, kind of came under last Tuesday maybe and kind of pushed through, had a little bit of adrenaline from the game, and then Sunday didn't go too well. I thought I would be a little bit better by that point and wasn't, and so, yeah, appreciated all the people here, got me seen and taken care of. That's the first practices I missed in 20 years of coaching, which was not very much fun, pretty excruciating to not be there with the guys and the staff. I was able to interact some with the staff on Monday from home, kind of limited that day. I was able to do a little bit more Tuesday from home again with them, but yeah, Coach Simmons took over the head-coaching aspects and offensively guys kind of pulled together and took on an equal share and guys, staff, everybody did a great job of business as normal, so it was great to get back out there yesterday. I missed being on the field with the guys. Yeah, I'm definitely a lot better than I was, but it's kind of a slow process working your way back. I've never had something like this before, so I'm kind of learning a little bit as I go. But it was good to get the days. As much as I didn't want to do it, my body needed them, the doctors and especially Caitlin really didn't give me a choice, which was good. So I'm better. Glad we're not playing today, glad I've got still a little bit more time, but much better. Yeah, hopeful -- I've made some big improvements here in the last 24 hours and hopefully I can keep making those jumps leading into Saturday."

Pneumonia is a very serious condition -- do you expect it to linger for a while and how does it limit you moving forward?

"Yeah, like I said, kind of learning about it, I've never had it before. Right now, just kind of energy level probably varies a little bit right now. I can't really yell, which maybe the players like that, so yeah, communication is a little iffy, I'm feeling a lot better. I'm a lot better today than I was yesterday and finally, it just felt for like 7-8 days there I really didn't make much progress at all and in fact kind of started going the other direction, so it feels good to finally make some progress. So yeah, if I'm limited in any way, we'll have plans in place and ready, but definitely going to do my best to be ready to do my part for the team come Saturday."

What was the balance of trying to rest and also knowing this is a tough stretch for the team and wanting to be there?

"Yeah, it was a balance. I don't know, I probably didn't balance it very well last week -- it's probably why I wasn't doing too good after, just kind of, I don't know, I feel if I had it to do over again, competitively I'm stubborn, I'd probably do the same thing, which is not proud of it. But last week kind of felt like I was in one of those positions where it's like, do you take away from the prep or do you what you probably should do for your body? I chose A and paid for it, obviously early this week. But it's hard not to, man. I'm very invested in this team and this program and want to win badly and want to do everything I can do to help these players and coaches. Yeah, obviously it's been at the forefront of our minds with everything with Dave [Nichol] -- not that this is anywhere near that serious, obviously it's not -- but you get in that conflict sometimes. Like I said, the first time in 20 years that I've missed practices, and there's a lot of other coaches that have gone much longer than that probably never missing a day. It's a tough position, man, because like you say, we are competitive and want to win, do our best, but you know, I'm thankful I've got some people here that looked out for me and appreciative of that. And [I'm] feeling better."

You were using a screen to protect play calls for the first time last week, was that a response to the Michigan situation?

"Nothing with Michigan. I know it’s getting a lot of attention right now. That kind of stuff has been going on forever. It happened to us at Oklahoma. It’s part of – like everyone said, it’s a remarkably easy fix. It’s amazing we haven’t gotten there to this point yet. But that kind of stuff has been going on forever. Now I don’t know about the extent of sending people to games. That one is far out there a little bit. But yeah – an opponent we’ve played against multiple times, an opponent we know that does a good job trying to grab signals. Just a way to try and protect a few of the things that we do."