Alright, let me walk you through how I figured out the whole Mike Riley coaching history thing the other day. It wasn’t super complicated, but sometimes you gotta dig a little, you know?
So, I heard his name mentioned somewhere, can’t recall exactly where, maybe watching some old game highlights or reading something online. And I thought, “Huh, Mike Riley. Where has that guy coached over the years?” I knew some big names, but I felt like I was missing parts of the picture.
First thing I did, naturally, was just grab my phone and type in something simple like “mike riley coaching jobs”. Got a mix of stuff back. Some news articles, some biographical pages. It was a bit scattered.
I realized I needed to be a bit more specific. Added “football” to the search – “mike riley football coach history”. That cleaned things up a good bit. Started seeing team names pop up more consistently.
Putting the Pieces Together
Okay, so now I was getting somewhere. I started mentally listing the places as I saw them repeated across different search results. Didn’t bother writing it down at first, just kinda collected them in my head.
Key Teams I Noticed:
- Oregon State Beavers – This one came up a lot. Seems like he had a couple of different stints there.
- Nebraska Cornhuskers – Remembered that one, pretty high-profile gig.
- San Diego Chargers (NFL) – Knew he’d been in the pros, yeah, the Chargers head coach job.
- Winnipeg Blue Bombers (CFL) – Saw this Canadian team listed, that was interesting.
- San Antonio Commanders (AAF) – Oh yeah, that league that came and went real fast.
I saw some other assistant roles mentioned too, like at USC and with the Saints in the NFL. So, I tried to piece together a rough timeline. It wasn’t about getting every single assistant job perfectly ordered, more about the head coaching stops.
I kinda bounced between a couple of pages I found, just reading the summaries of his career. One page might mention the CFL job first, another might focus on the college roles. I just scanned through, looking for the main head coaching positions and trying to get them in a somewhat chronological sequence in my mind.
Basically, I started with the early stuff I saw, like Winnipeg, then the college roles like Oregon State (the first time), then the NFL jump with the Chargers, back to Oregon State, then Nebraska, and finally that short AAF stint. Plus, noting he had various coordinator or assistant roles sprinkled in between and afterward.
So yeah, that was pretty much my process. Just some basic searching, refining the search terms, and mentally stitching together the info from the results I trusted the most. No magic involved, just a bit of reading and sorting it out. Got the picture I was looking for in the end.
