College Football Playoff

Mike Riley totaled 48 years as a coach at the collegiate and professional levels, serving as the head coach at Oregon State from 1997-98 and 2003-14 and at Nebraska from 2015-17. Throughout his career, he has guided teams as a head coach in five different professional leagues: the Canadian Football League (CFL), World League of American Football (WLAF), National Football League (NFL), Alliance of American Football and the United State Football League (USFL).

Riley spent the first eight years of his coaching career as a college assistant before moving to the CFL. His first head coaching position came in 1987 with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, where he led the squad to Grey Cup titles in 1988 and 1990. After a head coaching stint with San Antonio in the WLAF and time as an assistant at Southern California, he became the head coach at Oregon State in 1997.

In 1999, Riley was named head coach of the San Diego Chargers and served in that role for three seasons before spending a year as assistant head coach with the New Orleans Saints. Riley then returned to Oregon State as head coach in 2003, where he spent the next 12 seasons. In his 14 combined seasons at the helm of the Beavers, Riley ultimately collected 93 career wins, the most in school history. He moved to Nebraska after the 2014 campaign and coached the Cornhuskers for three years, and, most recently he was the head coach of the USFL's New Jersey Generals for the 2022-23 seasons.

Riley graduated from the University of Alabama, where he was a defensive back on coach Paul Bryant's 1973 national championship team. He later earned his master's degree at Whitworth while an assistant coach.