Oklahoma football: Refuting a silly hot take on Lincoln Riley

Oklahoma football has been knocking at the door to join college football’s elite club for the last four years, but at least one columnist thinks that time has come to an end.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram’s Mac Engel wrote a scathing column on Lincoln Riley this week, dragging the head of Oklahoma football despite his 26-4 record as a head coach.

In a column titled “Slow down on the Lincoln Riley genius talk” Engel contends that Riley’s success has been entirely based on Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray – two Heisman winners and No. 1 overall NFL draft picks – and that Oklahoma football’s time atop the Big 12 is about to come to an end.

"Oklahoma’s Godzilla-grip on the Big 12 is over, and life for Lincoln Riley is about to get real real quick. Even the best coaches look a lot dumber when they don’t have the players to make them look smart."

He goes on to call the past four seasons – seasons in which the Sooners became the first Power Five program to win four consecutive conference titles since Florida did it in the 1990s – a disappointment.

Oklahoma Sooners Football

"Oklahoma’s inability to win a college football playoff game with Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray as the starting quarterback in consecutive seasons is the single biggest waste in the history of the Big 12."

Yes, many Oklahoma football fans would agree that a run of four years with a No. 1 overall pick and Heisman-winning quarterback at the helm without a national title isn’t exactly what they would want to see, but to call it the biggest disappointment int he history of the conference – a history that includes the star-crossed Sooners teams of 2003-04, the 1998 Kansas State team that was an upset loss to A&M from winning the title and Colt McCoy‘s injury in the 2009 national title game among many others – is stretching beyond dubious and into meme territory.