Lincoln Riley a Top Candidate for Houston and Plenty Other Jobs
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma Sooners have thrived offensively and in the win column with Lincoln Riley as offensive coordinator.
It was no secret that Riley was one of the brightest young up-and-comers in the college coaching business when Bob Stoops persuaded him to come to Oklahoma prior to the 2015 season.
When you surround yourself with the best, great things are destined to happen, and that is exactly what has taken place since Stoops brought in Riley, one of best and brightest offensive minds in the college game today, to shake things up in the Oklahoma offense and get the Sooners back on a consistent winning track.
The risk of bringing in an assistant with the pedigree and performance resume of someone like Riley is that you probably aren’t going to be able to keep him very long.
Sooner rather than later, great coordinators become top prospects for head-coaching positions, and that is exactly where Lincoln Riley is right now in his career. He made a strong name for himself in what he was able to accomplish as offensive coordinator at East Carolina and as an assistant coach before that at Texas Tech.
Not surprisingly, Riley’s name has come up for several head-coaching openings in the last month or so, most specifically for the job vacated at Houston when Tom Herman was hired last week to replace Charlie Strong at Texas.
Most college experts have Riley as the perfect fit for the Houston job, which Riley interviewed for this week. A source told Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports this week that Riley “hit it out of the park…I would be surprised if they don’t hire him.”
Dodd writes: “Riley fits the Houston profile of a young, up-and-coming assistant with Texas roots hungry to take over a top Group of Five program. The same label applied to Tom Herman and before him Kevin Sumlin and Art Briles.”
Riley was a walk-on quarterback at Texas Tech and served for seven seasons as an assistant coach there. He left Texas Tech in 2010 to become offensive coordinator at East Carolina, where he spent five seasons before leaving to come to Oklahoma.
At East Carolina, Riley’s offensive teams produced the five best passing seasons in school history, and his 2014 offensive unit ranked third in the country in passing yardage and fifth in total offense.
Oklahoma was seventh in the nation in total offense in Riley’s first season as the Sooners’ offensive coordinator and is third this season.
Riley is a member of the Mike Leach coaching tree and was instrumental in helping Leach introduce and execute the Air Raid offense at Texas Tech, the same offense that Leach introduced as the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma in Stoops’ head-coaching debut in 1999.
We could hear an announcement on Riley’s future before the end of this week.