The Tahir Family Team Room is slick and professional feeling, and always the temperature of the inside of a refrigerator. Moving press availability from the concourse to the post game room signals that talking time is nearly over. We’re about 72 hours from week zero football, and regular Tuesday press conferences begin next Tuesday.
Rivera’s comments ranged from attendance and alumni re-engagement, to the peculiarities of college football eligibility. In a through line from his comments leading up to the 2025 season, he noted the importance of meeting UCLA in particular; “One of our natural rivals. We’re going to rekindle that and hopefully keep it going.” Continuing on, he mentioned a desire to rekindle matchups with USC as well.
Rivera’s recent title expansion doesn’t alter his day-to-day, but it does ensure that conversations that he would be apprised of now go through him. “The idea behind it was really to put me in position where I can represent the university anytime there’s conversations dealing with football. For whatever reason people don’t want to look at the General Manager as head of football.”
As with any program, money is an ever present issue to be tended to, and it dominates his time. “More so than anything else has been alumni and donor engagement with the shift in the way finances are being used on player acquisition and player retention, then you have to enhance your coaching and support staff, it’s about academics, it’s sports medicine…I don’t spend as much time on the football field as I would like to. I really don’t.”
The expanded war chest has improved the day to day of the job, “A lot of the engagements have been terrific, a lot of people have stepped up and gotten involved. I’m really proud of what we did for the 2026 season, but guess what? Now we gotta start getting ready for 2027.”