USC’s Lincoln Riley on Dave Nichol: ‘Owe everything to the guy’

If it weren’t for Dave Nichol, Lincoln Riley will inform you, he may not have made it as a university soccer coach.

It was Nichol who gave him his shot as a walk-on quarterback at Texas Tech and taught him the intricacies of the Air Raid offense. When Riley hung up his cleats to be a pupil assistant with the Pink Raiders, it was Nichol who confirmed him the ropes, who answered his incessant questions, who taught him all that it meant to be a coach.

It was Nichol who first believed in him, and Riley would always remember that. When he was employed as USC’s coach in November, there was little question in Riley’s thoughts he’d ask Nichol to affix the workers.

“With out him I actually didn’t have some other ins into this enterprise, and this enterprise is difficult to get into,” Riley mentioned. “I look again on it now and assume, ‘Man, had Dave not taken a vested curiosity in some no-name walk-on coming in there, I most likely wouldn’t be right here proper now.’ So myself, my household, we actually owe every part to the man.”

Nichol, 45, died Friday after a battle with most cancers, abandoning a path of coaches and gamers whose lives he’d touched alongside the way in which. That legacy would reside on not solely in Riley, however in so many different coaches Nichol met by a training profession that took him to each nook of the nation, from Lubbock, Texas, to Greenville, N.C., and eventually to Los Angeles, the place he’d spent the final 4 months as USC’s inside receivers coach.

Mike Stoops, who coached at Arizona with Nichol, remembered him on social media as “one of many purest I’ve ever identified.” Mike Leach, who coached Nichol and employed him at Texas Tech, wrote that he “meant loads to me and numerous others.”

For Riley, Nichol was the one who first opened the door to a future in teaching. But nobody had paved an identical path for Nichol. He fought his approach by the ranks, working as a graduate assistant from one cease to the subsequent, typically for little to no pay. As an assistant at Cisco (Texas) Faculty, he painted strains on the soccer discipline and served as a pseudo-handyman, finishing no matter minor repairs got here up.

It was taxing work, and Nichol by no means complained, even because it took one other 5 years after that to get a full-time teaching job, courtesy of Stoops at Arizona. That perseverance at all times struck Riley.

“I feel lots of people would have given up as a result of these are onerous years once you’re a GA,” Riley mentioned. “You’re not making any cash, you’re doing all types of various jobs and all types of various hours. And he knew what he wished to do, and he advised me the opposite day as we had been speaking that if he had it throughout, he’d do it precisely the identical approach.”

Over the previous couple of weeks of Nichol’s life, as his situation worsened, Riley would name at evening to speak to his buddy. Riley mentioned Nichol had little interest in speaking about his prognosis. He wished to listen to about USC’s walk-throughs and set up of schemes. So the 2 coaches would speak ball, like they at all times had.

“He was Zooming in to every part we did,” Riley mentioned. “That simply exhibits you sort of who he was, man. He beloved ball, he beloved ‘SC. He beloved this place, this was a dream for him with the ability to come right here.”

Nichol died three days after the beginning of USC’s spring session. On Saturday, the staff gathered once more for follow, with workers and gamers nonetheless in a fog.

“It was good to get again on the sector,” Riley mentioned. “That’s the place Dave beloved to be. He beloved the sector as a lot as anyone. So most likely for us, you’re taking some peace in that, that you just’re on the market doing what he beloved to do.”