Lincoln Riley is fully transitioned to Southern Cal, but he finds himself still setting the record straight about his departure from Oklahoma.

For perspective, Riley is taking over a program that went 4-8 last season, and hasn’t had national success in 15 years.

The reasons fans and media have pointed to are not Riley’s reasons, and he explained as much to Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports. They went something like this, as Dodd described: The climb up the SEC hill was to too big for him with the Sooners transitioning from the Big 12. It’s easier to win in a trending-downward Pac-12 than either the Big 12 or SEC.

“I heard the whole SEC narrative,” Riley told CBS Sports. “To me, the SEC has nothing to do with it. It’s all about the program that you’re at and the position you think you can get to. I don’t look at it like where I want to retire, trying to set up stability [at one place]. I’m 38. I want to experience different things. I want to win. This opportunity is so good, how can you not do it?”

It wasn’t necessarily a knock against Oklahoma, but Riley put USC in a class by itself.

“You always knew this place was special,” Riley said. “You saw games all over the country … but there was something about [USC] that was different. It felt different when you watched it. The energy behind it was different.”

Roster development is a key difference, though.

“I’ve walked into 4 playoffs, and I’ve never had better than maybe the third-best roster [of the four teams],” Riley said. “Every other year, we were 4 of 4. We had really good rosters, but they weren’t the same. … I can’t imagine that there could be a setting that we could build a better roster than we can here.”