Oklahoma football: Timing may be right for Riley, but not for OU

Lincoln Riley was well liked in Norman and by his players and Oklahoma football fans scattered throughout the country.

The Sooners did well under his leadership — 55 wins in 65 games, leading to three consecutive College Football Playoff appearances and four straight conference championships will attest to that.

But the 38-year-old head coach is in Los Angeles now and leading another football blue blood in USC, and he took four assistants with him. In the meantime, Oklahoma is left scrambling to put back the pieces and hold on the pieces it still has. The Sooners are far from the brink of collapse, but they surely have taken a significant hit with Riley’s sudden departure.

You can’t really blame the assistants for joining their head coach. With a new hire coming in to be the next Oklahoma head coach, what generally happens is he will want to bring in some of his own assistants.

Until all that gets sorted out, though, Bob Stoops has stepped in to fill the void, and he and the remaining OU assistants are busy out on the recruiting trail trying to keep the Sooners’ existing commitments in tow with just two weeks before the early national signing period commences.

The Sooners have lost seven recruiting commitments thus far — mostly from the previously No. 1-ranked OU 2023 class  — and there exists the probability for more both before and after a new head coach is hired. The fallout isn’t just among those Oklahoma prospects who thought Lincoln Riley was going to be their college head coach. It’s also happening among current roster players.

As of this writing four current Sooners, including former starting quarterback Spencer Rattler, have opted to transfer elsewhere, and it has been reported that several other OU players are considering doing so.

Interestingly, WRs Theo Wease and Jadon Haselwood, both five-star recruits, and four-star TE Austin Stogner all announced on Tuesday they were entering the transfer portal. All three receivers were part of the same top-10 2019 recruiting class that brought Rattler to Oklahoma.

The common denominator in all of this obviously is Riley, who up until, in his words, this past weekend hadn’t shown any interest in leaving Oklahoma for another college opportunity, although rumors were flying everywhere that he was going to become the next head coach at LSU.

It’s hard to believe, though, the thought wasn’t rattling around somewhere in his head, and when the call and pitch came from USC on Sunday morning, it hit the sweet spot.

All that is history now. Riley has moved on, and so is Oklahoma.

The unfortunate truth is, after all the dust settles and the new head coach is in place, the Sooners are going to go through a transition period and will have some rebuilding or at least some serious reorganizing to do. That’s not something this program has had to experience since Stoops arrived in town in 1999 to begin his head-coaching career.

Stoops reminded the media, when he was introduced on Sunday as the interim head coach, that Oklahoma was in much worse shape when he took over the program in December 1988 than it will be when the next Sooner head coach is named.

"“Give it a little time and you’re going to see, this is just a little bump in the road,” Stoops said.“There’s not one guy, one person in the history of this program that’s bigger than the program, coach Switzer, myself or Lincoln Riley.”"

That’s absolutely true, but it’s also true that Riley was an incredible talent draw, especially at offensive skill positions, and this week we are seeing the impact of that, both pro and con, as the Sooners look to the future.