College Football Playoff

Mike Riley spent 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. He has also been the head coach of teams 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. Later, his first head coaching position came in 1987 with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, which he would lead 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 he was named head coach of the San Diego Chargers, serving in that role for three seasons. After a year as assistant head coach with the New Orleans Saints, Riley returned to Oregon State as head coach in 2003. He spent the next 12 seasons in Corvalis and ultimately collected 93 career wins in his combined 14 seasons as head coach, the most in school history. Riley moved to Nebraska after the 2014 season and coached the Cornhuskers for three years. 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.