Will Lincoln Riley be the next OU head coach to win 100 games?
By Chip Rouse
Lincoln Riley is in just his second season as Oklahoma head football coach, yet he has already established a first.
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Oklahoma won a dozen games in 2017 in Riley’s inaugural season as head coach. That is two more than any of the other 21 head football coaches in the Sooners’ storied past.
It’s far too early to speculate on how many games the 34-year-old Riley will win at Oklahoma. He has been associated with 34 Sooner wins in three seasons in Norman, but only 12 as head coach, and with a loaded, championship-caliber team he inherited from Bob Stoops.
Given the elite national status of the Oklahoma football program, the chances are very good that Riley will remain on the job as long as he keeps winning. Winning is a relative term, as it applies to Oklahoma football. Anything less than double-digit wins is not considered a successful season — not by OU standards.
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Stoops averaged 10.5 wins per season. That compares with 9.8 wins per year by Switzer and 8.5 by Wilkinson. Ten-win seasons are not that easy. Yet Stoops produced 14 of them with 10 or more wins in 18 seasons, to go along with 10 Big 12 championships.
That means Riley would have to stay at least 10 seasons and win a minimum of 10 games every year to reach the 100-win mark and join the exclusive Sooner coaches club. Very doable, but perhaps a bit ambitious to contemplate at this early stage.
Stoops won a program-best 190 games in 18 season as the Sooners head coach. That is saying a lot in a program whose coaching tree includes legendary names like Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer. Stoops is one of four former OU coaches who exceeded the century mark in wins at Oklahoma.
Switzer won 157 games in 16 seasons, Wilkinson won 145 games in 17 seasons, and Bennie Owen, the longest tenured of the Oklahoma head coaches and a head coach in multiple OU sports, won 122 games in 22 seasons in the early 1900s.
Coaching success at Oklahoma isn’t just measured in the number of wins. It also matters who you beat and how often. For example, you play an 11- or 12-game schedule, but wins — and conversely losses — over archrival Texas, in-state rival Oklahoma State and, in the day, Nebraska, count more than against any other opponent.
Riley is off to a great start against the Sooners two biggest rivals. He has yet to lose to Texas or Oklahoma State as a head coach. As the Sooners’ offensive coordinator in 2015-16, he split two games in the Red River Showdown with Texas and defeated Oklahoma State twice.
Wilkinson and Switzer were the only ones of the four Sooner 100-win coaches who faced Texas, Oklahoma State and Nebraska every season during their time at OU. Wilkinson had the best record going against the Sooners’ three rivals (40-11). He never lost to Oklahoma State (17-0) and was 14-3 against Nebraska. He also produced a winning record in the Red River rivalry (9-8).
By comparison, Switzer was 9-5-2 against Texas, 16-1 versus Oklahoma State and 12-5 in games with Nebraska. Stoops was 11-7 against Texas, 14-4 against in the Bedlam series with Oklahoma State and 5-2 in the Big 12 against Nebraska.
Going back to the early days of Oklahoma football, Bennie Owen’s teams dominated Oklahoma A&M (which became Oklahoma State), with 16 wins, two losses and two ties. He was 7-8 in games with Texas and just 1-5-1 in seven contests against Nebraska.
With one full season under his belt, Lincoln Riley is off to the best start of any of his predecessors at Oklahoma, but he has the equivalent of 90 yards to go to reach the pantheon of the great Sooner head coaches that have gone before him.