LOS ANGELES — It started as a casual call between friends and peers, Lincoln Riley and Kliff Kingsbury checking up on each other. Then Kingsbury came to L.A. and the pair spent time together.

In passing, Riley asked Kingsbury, recently fired as head coach of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, if he would be interested in a senior analyst position at USC. Riley explained the responsibilities: Working with quarterbacks, game planning, occasionally a sounding board for Riley with head coach experience.

In the end, Kingsbury signed on, his hiring made official in a statement Tuesday morning.

“It’s one of those you don’t know if it’ll ever time out to get a chance to work together. So I think this’ll be a special year for both of us,” Riley said. “He sees the opportunity that this is right now. Which is a cool statement for our program, that a guy like that would want to come take this role.”

It’s a reunion 21 years in the making.

Kingsbury and Riley briefly crossed paths as student-athletes at Texas Tech. Kingsbury was the senior starting quarterback in 2002, Riley the walk-on freshman who would soon transition to coaching.

“I guess the me 20 years ago, that would have been a kind of far-out-there thought that we’d be coaching at USC (one day),” Riley said.

When Kingsbury’s professional career came to a close, he started coaching at Houston as Riley worked at conference rival East Carolina. They crossed paths again as head coaches in the Big 12, Riley at Oklahoma and Kingsbury back at their alma mater.

As competitors, they didn’t talk much football. But when Kingsbury took over as Cardinals head coach and the team drafted Sooners quarterback Kyler Murray first overall, Riley and Kingsbury began to connect more regularly.

Now reunited in Los Angeles, Kingsbury has deep familiarity with Riley’s offense, modeled as it is off Mike Leach’s version of the Air Raid taught to both at Texas Tech. And he brings a lot of experience shaping quarterbacks from Patrick Mahomes to Johnny Manziel.

“It’s cool,” USC Heisman winner Caleb Williams said. “Can’t wait to get him here and learn from him.”

But his head coaching experience can be something Riley can lean on as he deals both with in-game and weekly challenges.

“I’ve tried to learn and build the staff to allow me to cover all the bases I need to cover as a head coach,” Riley said. “Here in our second year, I gotta be whatever the program needs me to be, and that’ll be a little bit different in Year 2 versus Year 1. … Having someone in the room that’s a former head coach – everybody thinks they know what that’s like until they sit in that chair, and having someone that’s done that is invaluable.”

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How long this reunion between Riley and Kingsbury lasts, who’s to say? Kingsbury had opportunities to be an NFL offensive coordinator this offseason, and will likely be a hot commodity again next winter.

But for however long it lasts, it’s a pairing that would likely please Leach, who died in December.

“He’d come up with a really clever and probably crude remark to describe it,” Riley said. “He’d have a funny take on it, but yeah, I think deep down he’d enjoy it. I think he always took some pride in seeing guys getting together.”