For Oklahoma football fans this season, measuring success isn't just about wins and losses and life in a new conference, it's also about how the Sooners are doing in comparison to Lincoln Riley and USC, which is also experiencing what it's like in a new conference.
Sooner fans aren't going to soon forget Riley up and leaving the Oklahoma football program for what he claimed was a better opportunity for him and his family along with widespread speculation that he wouldn't be as successful in the SEC with Oklahoma as he was in the Big 12.
Along those same lines, Riley must have reasoned that the path to continued success as a head coach would be better served at USC and in the Pac-12 than at OU. Little did the man Sooner fans now simply refer to as "Muleshue" realize at the time that his new school would soon be on its way to the Big Ten.
For those fans who might not readily recall -- although there can't be many -- along with those who would rather forget, here is the back story to all of this:
What once was nothing but admiration and respect for the man that took over for the retired Bob Stoops quickly turned to anger and betrayal when the fateful announcement came of Riley's sudden departure on Nov. 28, 2021. And what's worse, he took with him several assistant coaches and the Sooners starting quarterback in Caleb Williams.
Brent Venables, who was extremely well liked and had been a member of the Oklahoma football family previously under Bob Stoops, was brought in to clean up the pieces of what Riley had left behind in a program that was in greater decline and disarray than many realized.
That first season, in 2022, for both Venables and Riley in their new positions did not do much to assuage the hurt and ill feelings Sooner fans had -- and still have -- toward Riley. USC ended the season with an 11-3 overall record, won the Pac-12 regular-season title and the former Oklahoma quarterback Williams won the Heisman Trophy. Meanwhile, Oklahoma struggled in its first season under Venables, going 6-7 and finishing with a losing record for the first time in 25 years. Critics were questioning whether Venables was the right man for the OU job.
The one thing that gave Oklahoma fans some small consolation from all the disappointment of the 2022 season was that USC lost to Utah in the Pac-12 Championship and followed that up losing to Tulane in the Cotton Bowl Classic to end the season with consecutive losses.
The 2023 season, or Year 2 for Venables and Riley at OU and USC, respectively, saw a reversal of fortunes for the two programs. The Sooners rebounded from their disappointing first season under Venables to finish out the year 10-3, a four-game improvement over the prior season. Meanwhile, Riley's Trojans took several steps backward ending up the 2023 season at 8-5 overall.
That brings us to Year 3 and the transition year for both teams and head coaches as they make their presence known in their new conferences. This season both Oklahoma and USC are struggling to keep their heads above water and the fan bases of both are becoming increasingly restless and losing confidence in the respective head coaches. Neither Venables nor Riley have demonstrated that they are the right hires for the job. The coaching seat for both is beginning to take on greater heat as the trend line of the two teams tracks downward.
"We were waiting for that moment when one school and one fan base could say it won the war," says Matt Zemek, who writes for Trojan Wars, a USC-dedicated website affiliated with the USA Today network. "It turns out, the joke was on all of us, on both sides. USC and Oklahoma fans were both wrong. Neither school has prospered. Neither school has the upper hand. Both teams are mired in misery."
Oklahoma has two games remaining in the 2024 regular season -- at home with Alabama and on the road at USC. Chances are good the Sooners will lose both games and end their season with a 5-7 record overall and just 1-7 in the SEC, the worst by an Oklahoma team since 1998.
USC has games left Nebraska, UCLA and the annual rivalry game against Notre Dame. If the Trojans are able to win two of those games, they will finish 6-6 in the regular season (4-5 in the conference) and become bowl eligible. That would give Riley and USC a slight leg up on OU, but hardly one to jump up and down about. Lose two of the three remaining contests and the Trojans will wind up sharing the same miserable destiny that is likely to be Oklahoma's this season.
Any way you look at it, this has not been an acceptable season for either Oklahoma or USC, rendering bragging rights irrelevant and meaningless and leaving both teams with lots of work to do in the offseason.
As for the war of words between the two fan bases, don't expect this to end anytime soon. Sooner fans are still smarting from the 55-19 shellacking by USC in the 2004 BCS National Championship game.