Do not be fooled or misled by Mike Riley’s outwardly placid, Pacific Northwest-mellow, uncomplicated attitude. Oregon State’s veteran football coach is ultra-competitive, motivated by what he calls a “fear of sliding backwards.”

And there are things that keep him up at night in his southwest Corvallis home, a mere five-minute commute from Reser Stadium, and his third-floor corner office in the Valley Football Center.

Like everyone in his peer group, he worries about losing games, about his players’ possibly getting into trouble, about persuading 18-year-old athletes to spend the next four or five years of their lives in a small Oregon community that’s well off the beaten path for the national media and lacking bright lights-big city amenities.

But there are definitely two things that don’t concern the 56-year old Riley, who on Sept. 4 begins his 10th season at OSU when the Beavers open perhaps the toughest non-conference schedule in the country against TCU at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

One is job security. Riley, who left OSU after the 1998 season to coach the San Diego Chargers before returning to Corvallis in 2003, ended all speculation about a departure for USC this past February by signing a three-year extension that locks him up through 2019 and essentially makes him OSU’s coach for life. He was USC’s offensive coordinator from 1993-96, and was reported to be the Trojans’ top choice to succeed Pete Carroll.

“I can live my life right here (in Corvallis) and get all the problems and all the satisfaction I need,” he said, quickly ending the back-to-USC rumors that started immediately after Carroll bolted Troy for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks.

Second, Riley is secure in his reputation as a topflight coach, even if he’s not appreciated for it. Noted college football reporter Ivan Maisel called Riley the nation’s “most underrated” coach in his 2008 book, The Maisel Report: College Football’s Most Overrated and Underrated Players, Coaches, Teams, and Traditions. Self-deprecating to the core, Riley just chuckles and surmises that even if he is underrated, that sure beats being unemployed.

“I am just really content in the place I’m working and the team I’m coaching,” he says. “We just want to do the very best we can; all that other stuff is for somebody else to talk about or to decide.

“Our program has grown in a lot of ways, and we’re just proud of that. We’re just trying to fight to make it better and better each year. However it’s portrayed — and I think it’s portrayed generally in a very positive way — that’s what’s really important to me.”

Riley was 8–14 in his first stint at OSU. In his second season the Beavers — who had only three wins in the two seasons before he took over — went 5–6 and were 12 points away from an 8–3 record that would have ended a 27-year streak of losing seasons.

He has had only one losing season since his return in 2003. OSU is 56–33 overall during that span and has the second-best record in the Pac-10 (25–11) in the four seasons since the league went to a complete round robin. He’s also won five of six bowl games, has finished in the AP top 25 three times, and was in contention until the final game of the season for the Pac-10 championship and OSU’s first Rose Bowl since 1965 in both 2008 and 2009.

“I don’t think he gets enough praise for what he does,” says assistant coach Keith Heyward, who was one of Riley’s first recruits and played under him in 1997 and 1998. “But it’s alright, because we’re Oregon State and we’re just gonna keep working hard and do what we do.

“Coach Riley is a great guy, he understands all three phases of football and he teaches us to work hard and win. That’s this program; that’s this town. The Trojans get a lot more media hype and attention, but attention is just attention. It doesn’t mean anything if you’re not winning games.”

Riley’s program has won wide acclaim for its “family atmosphere” and this past season was selected as the most family-friendly program in the nation for the third consecutive time by College Football Live! The award recognizes programs that encourage team unity, support academics, exhibit loyalty, and prepare athletes for a life after football.

Recruits frequently mention those characteristics when announcing their commitment to OSU. “It was just one of those atmospheres where I felt like I belonged ... spending the weekend hanging out with the Rodgers brothers (James Rodgers, Jacquizz Rodgers), those guys were something else,” wide receiver Obum Gwacham says in recalling his campus visit. “Coach Riley invited everyone to his house, all the recruits and their parents.”

As if to emphasize the family atmosphere, there are a number of brother combinations associated with the program, including redshirt sophomore Zane Norris and his older brother, former star defensive end Slade Norris, now with the Oakland Raiders.

“I feel like I can come up to any guy and ask them to listen to me, and they will,” Zane Norris says. “It’s really a different breed here. They are so accepting and so nice.”

Says Riley: “We are truly a group here, a staff and a team that do this together. We all share in our victories and our defeats.”

Heyward says that Riley has evolved as a coach and grown as a person since they first met in 1997, but that Riley’s basic values have not changed.

“He’s the same guy,” Heyward says. “He still cares about people, and wants to see everybody do well. He’s genuine.

“I think he remembers everybody’s name that he meets. That’s hard to do, because he meets a lot of people. But it matters to him that he knows who you are and how you’re doing. That says a lot about Coach Riley.”

Riley says “staying grounded” and constantly striving to improve are of paramount importance, to him personally, to his staff, and to his team week-to-week.

“One of my main motivators is the fear of sliding backwards,” he says. “So I’m always trying to find a better way and I encourage my staff to find a better way to teach, a better way to coach, a better play to run and a better way to run that play. We’re always searching to do it better. If you can stay grounded in those kind of principles, then you never ever have to fear sliding over into that really, really scary world of overconfidence.”

Riley could have doubled his already-comfortable salary by going to USC this past offseason. Instead he graciously rebuffed any overtures, re-upped with the Beavers, kept driving his Prius to work and remained the same guy he was when he earned about $10,000 a year in 1977 as a fledgling assistant at nearby Linfield College.

“If (money and fame) become your motivating factor, then in the end you’re not gonna get it done, it’s never going to be real,” Riley says. “It doesn’t matter where you are, or how much you have, how big your house is or how much money you make.

“It’s the principles by which you’ve become successful in a program with a group of people. If you lose those things, then none of that other stuff matters at all.”

This feature appears in the 2010 Athlon Sports Pac-10 magazine. Click here to purchase your copy.