Oklahoma football: OU’s 8 losses in Lincoln Riley era reveal pattern

In four seasons as the Oklahoma football coach, Lincoln Riley has won 45 games and lost just eight times.

Three of those eight losses were in the semifinal round of the College Football Playoff, and all three were to teams from the Southeastern Conference.

The other five Oklahoma losses during Riley’s time as head coach were against Big 12 opponents, and four of the five came against just two teams.

Iowa State, the Big 12 regular-season champions a year ago, has beaten the Sooners twice since Riley took over the OU head coaching job in 2017 following Bob Stoops’ retirement. And Kansas State has pulled off the feat in each of the last two seasons.

The other conference loss suffered by the Sooners in the past four seasons was to Texas in the 2018 Red River rivalry game. OU lost that game 48-45 on a Longhorn 40-yard field goal with just nine seconds remaining in the game. The Sooners were able to avenge that loss, however, with a win over Texas in the Big 12 Championship.

If you go back six seasons, which encompasses the entire time Riley has been at Oklahoma (two years as offensive coordinator and the previous four as head coach), the Sooners have lost a total of six Big 12 games to three different teams — Kansas State twice, Iowa State twice and Texas twice — by a combined 34 points, or seven or fewer points per game.

Here is how I would rank the five Oklahoma Big 12 losses that have occurred during Riley’s four seasons as the Sooner head coach (in descending order, 5 through 1, from worst to the least egregious):