Lincoln Riley shares memories, pays tribute to Dave Nichol

The USC football team returned to practice Saturday morning, a day after the passing of assistant coach Dave Nichol.

While Nichol may not have spent a long time around the program, he had long-lasting relationships with many of the Trojans' coaches, as told by the outpouring of emotion and photos shared on Twitter on Friday.

Perhaps none closer than with head coach Lincoln Riley, who joined reporters for his regularly-scheduled Zoom call after practice.

"Yesterday was tough. I think everybody was just in a little bit of like a fog, like a haze yesterday, man. It just really didn't seem real. So, really tough, just emotional day. You put on your game face and work, but it was tough," Riley said. "I think today it was good to get back on the field. That's where Dave loved to be, he loved the field as much as anybody, so probably for us, you take some peace in that that you're out there doing what he loved to do. And then also, I think in some ways probably for us you probably get away from it for a little bit when you get busy.

"Everybody's been through tough times in their life and sometimes getting busy and trying to get locked in on other tasks is a good medicine. Personally speaking, that's been helpful for me."

Like a number of coaches on the USC staff and across the country, Riley had shared his emotions on Twitter after the news was announced that Nichol had died at the age of 45 in McKinney, Texas. It wasn't included in the official university statement, but it's known that he died from cancer.

He expounded on those sentiments Saturday, while also sharing memories about Nichol, who was a student assistant at Texas Tech when Riley got there as a walk-on quarterback. Riley later hired him when he was the offensive coordinator at East Carolina, and hired him here at USC in December to be his inside receivers coach and associate head coach for offense.

"We were able to tell the team yesterday afternoon. As you can imagine, a lot of emotion with the guys and certainly a lot of staff members. Many of the staff members that we have were very close to Dave. A lot of the guys and people here worked with Dave at various other stops. So just a difficult day. I don't know how else to describe it -- just a really, really difficult day. We'll really miss him more than you can imagine," Riley said.

"Just a guy that really loved ball. I told the players the other day I'd go home at night here the last couple weeks when he wasn't feeling too good, he didn't want to talk about none of that. All he wanted to talk about was how are the guys doing, how is install going, how are walkthroughs? He was Zooming in to everything we did. That just shows you kind of who he was, man. He loved ball, he loved 'SC. He loved this place, this was a dream for him being able to come here."

Nichol was part of Mike Leach's support staff at Texas Tech when Riley arrived as a walk-on QB. Riley elaborated on the role Nichol played at time in his life and career.

"Honestly, there's a strong possibility I wouldn't be in college coaching without him in a lot of ways. He was really the one that kind of gave me my first shot to walk on at Texas Tech when he was an offensive assistant there. And then when I got into the coaching side of it, he was really the one when I was a student assistant and didn't know anything about anything, he was kind of the guy that guided me, kind of taught me how to become a coach. He taught me the offense really when I was a player," Riley said.

"As a walk-on quarterback coming in, you're fighting, clawing, scrapping trying to learn everything you can and I probably bugged him to death those early years just trying to learn it all and he was great to me the whole time. That was kind of him. Like anybody that knew him, Dave was one of those people, he didn't care where you're from, he didn't care your rank in the organization. He treated the head coach the same way he treated some first-day walk-on. That was just him. He was just a really good person to all people and I certainly benefited from that early in our time. And we had a great relationship through the years."

That was the recurring theme in all the messages posted to Twitter on Friday from those who worked with and knew Nichol -- that above all he was a genuine, good-hearted guy who left a positive impression on everybody.

"He was really funny, really witty, could impersonate anybody as good as anybody I've ever seen. His Mike Stoops impersonation is, we got some old video that I'm sure we'll be breaking out, but they're some of the funniest things you've ever seen in your life," Riley continued. "It was just hard not to, people kind of just gravitated towards him. That was just him. Without him both as a player first and as a young coach, without him I really didn't have any other ins into this business and this business is hard to get into. I look back on it now and think, man, like had Dave not taken a vested interest in some no-name walk-on coming in there, I probably wouldn't be here right now. So myself, my family, we really owe everything to the guy."

Riley's career took off quickly at Texas Tech once he transitioned early in his time there from walk-on to student assistant coach for three years, ultimately graduate assistant for a year and then receivers coach.

Nichol had a different path -- one that really spoke to his passion for the game of football and for pursuing this career.

"I would say, Dave was so driven. Our paths were very different. I got really fortunate when I was at Texas Tech and kind of worked my way up to being a GA. I was a GA one year and then got hired as the receivers coach. My shot came early to get on the field. Dave was a way better coach than I was at that age, probably still is, and he had to fight his way through. He came on, he played at Tech and did the student assistant thing for multiple years. He went to Cisco Junio College and was an assistant there, I think he made like $10,000 a year. I remember him telling me, they painted the lines on the field, they would paint the locker room, they did repairs, they were academic counselors, they did everything. It's a hard job," Riley said.

"And then came back to Texas Tech, GA again for three years; on to Baylor, GA again; on to Arizona, GA again. I mean, he had a long road to get his first assistant job with Mike Stoops at Arizona, and Mike was smart enough to hire him. So yeah, I think just his perseverance through, when I think a lot of people would have given up because those are hard years when you're a GA. You're not making no money, you're doing all kinds of different job and all kinds of different hours. And he knew what he wanted to do, and he told me the other day as we were talking that if he had it all over, he'd do it exactly the same way. So that was just kind of the perseverance and pushing through it, willing to do anything within your power to do what you want to do in this life."

Nichol spent four years as an assistant coach at Arizona, working with the receivers, and then reconnected with Riley at East Carolina, coaching the outside receivers for three years before succeeding Riley as offensive coordinator when Riley left for Oklahoma. He also worked with USC outside receivers coach Dennis Simmons there.

Nichol was then at Washington State from 2016-19, where he worked with USC defensive coordinator Alex Grinch and assistants Brian Odom and Roy Manning, before following Leach to Mississippi State the last two years.

When Riley got the USC job, he knew he wanted Nichol on his staff.

"Absolutely. He was a guy, anytime I thought about staff members, whether it was an OC because we were able to hire him and work together at East Carolina a few years ago as well, he was always a guy I wanted to work with. He worked well together, complemented each other, so yeah," Riley said. "And with his experience on the west coast, when we decided to take this job at 'SC, I knew from second one that I was going to try to hire him. He's just one of those guys in the business that knew our stuff inside and out and you could just trust him. You could trust him so much as a coach.

"He was always going to get his job done. He was always going to put the team first. He was always going to get along with every single person in the staff building. He just was the epitome of a great coach and a great person."