Lincoln Riley was a hero in Oklahoma for seven seasons. But the moment he announced he was jumping ship and heading west to the warm sunshine and all the glitz and glamour of Southern California (pun intended) he became persona non grata in the Sooner State.
For whatever reason, the former Sooner head coach wants to keep fueling that fire. Just this past week, Riley was quoted as saying that the reason he left the OU football program was because “I just couldn’t recruit at the level at Oklahoma to compete with Bama, Georgia, Clemson and OSU (Ohio State).”
Funny, Brent Venables and his staff don’t seem to have any trouble with that.
https://twitter.com/MontySisco1/status/1704889782201892981
Riley has also been embroiled this week in a controversy that’s reached the national level over suspending News Group reporter Luca Evans for two weeks.
We’ve always known that Riley isn’t much of a media darling and that he doesn’t care all that much about dealing with the members of the Fourth Estate. But what on earth gave him the idea that he could impose a suspension on someone who doesn’t even work for him? It turns out cooler heads intervened in the situation, including the USC administration, and the suspension has been lifted.
These are the two most recent developments involving the self-willed Riley. Earlier this year in an interview with journalist Graham Bensinger that was completed in June but released this month, Riley said there were multiple break-in attempts at his Norman home in the days following his departure announcement Nov. 28, 2021.
“(I) had a lot of different people trying to break into the house the days after it happened,” Riley told Bensinger. According to the Norman police, however, “there were no reported break-in reports made in the months of November or December 2021,” according to an article in The Oklahoman.
Riley said he wanted his two daughters, five and nine at the time, to finish the 2021 fall semester at their school in Norman before moving to Los Angeles. That all changed after the alleged break-ins.
One has to ask why Riley waited so long to reveal alleged harassment he received after he announced he was leaving OU. This stuff keeps dribbling out like periodic shots over the bow. It’s like Riley feels he has to keep defending his decision to leave OU as well as the manner in which he and his family did so.
Riley compiled an impressive 55-10 record as OU head coach, and the Sooners were 22-4 the two seasons he served as offensive coordinator under Bob Stoops, who brought the young offensive mastermind to Norman. During his seven seasons in Norman, the Sooners won six consecutive Big 12 championships (2015-2020) and appeared four times in the College Football Playoff.
While at Oklahoma, Riley rose to one of the five highest paid head coaches in college football. Sooner fans were of the belief that if he did leave OU it would be because of the increasing lure of the NFL, not for another college job.
After Ed Orgeron was fired at LSU in 2021, two years after winning the national championship and dismantling Oklahoma by 35 points in one of the national semifinal games, rumors began to percolate that Riley was going to leave to take that job. In fact, the same night as Oklahoma’s loss to Oklahoma State in the 2021 regular-season finale, Riley responded to reporter inquiries about the LSU rumors, saying he was not going to LSU. That was a truthful answer. What he did not, reveal was that he was headed in a different direction.
Riley is now viewed as a traitor by Oklahoma football fans. The local party line is you just don’t walk away on your own volition from the job at Oklahoma, and even worse, without saying goodbye. It’s become quite fashionable among diehard Sooner fans to refer to the former Sooner head coach simply as “Muleshoe,” which callously refers to his hometown in Texas.
Just days after Riley left to assume the job at USC, Oklahoma state senator Bill Coleman actually proposed a bill in the state legislature to designate the last three inches of the westbound lane of desolate state highway 325 leaving Oklahoma as the Lincoln Riley Highway.
One recent report had it that if it weren’t for some friendly persuasion from running backs coach and former Sooner star DeMarco Murray, Riley wasn’t even going to address the Sooner team about his decision to leave.
Given all that’s happened — and is still happening, it seems — it’s probably safe to presume that ill feelings are harbored on both sides of this crazy back and forth war of words.
It’s been almost two full years and time to give it up and move on. There’s a new football sheriff in Norman by the name of Brent Venables. It’s true that Venables didn’t get off to the best start in his first season as head coach, but you can write this down: Venables’ OU legacy will never be viewed with the same vitriol as that of Riley, regardless of whatever happens going forward.
In retrospect, it’s probably not so bad that Riley decided to pick up his ball and take it elsewhere.