Sooner recruiting is thumbing its nose at Lincoln Riley and about to show what better defensive players can achieve

Let's be perfectly honest. There is no love loss between Sooner fans and runaway head coach Lincoln Riley

So anytime Oklahoma fans and especially diehard fans of Sooner football get the opportunity to thumb their nose at Riley and one-up him with the way things are going in Norman under new head coach Brent Venables they're going to do it.

At one point, Riley looked like he could do no wrong at Oklahoma. After all, he coached three Heisman Trophy winners and a Heisman runner-up in his seven total seasons with the Sooners. Bob Stoops delivered a championship level team to Riley when Stoops announced his retirement and the latter was elevated from offensive coordinator to head coach.

In five season leading the Sooners, Riley compiled a 55-10 overall record and won four consecutive Big 12 championships. His .846 winning percentage was the best of any OU football coach in history who had coached at least five seasons. Some thought he was well on his way to having a statue in his honor residing south of the stadium alongside the four Oklahoma coaching legends.

Riley took the Sooners to three consecutive College Football Playoff appearances, once as the No. 2 seed in the four-team championship tournament, but the Sooners never made it out of the semifinal round. The reason: a pathetically poor and inefficient defense that ranked as one of the worst in college football.

When Riley bailed out on OU and headed west, where apparently he thought he would have a better chance of winning than with the Sooners, who were on their way to the highly competitive SEC, the team that Venables inherited was left with a rudderless offense and a defense that leaked yards and points like a sieve.

Riley unquestionably is a great offensive mind with a great eye for and influence with top quarterback talent. Defense is not his skill set, though, and he's clearly not well versed or practiced in associating himself with someone with a comparable defensive mind.

In two seasons at USC, it appears Riley didn't learn much at Oklahoma about the critical importance of having at least a halfway proficient defense. Either that, or he refuses to address that side of the game. The Trojans ranked 93rd in the country in scoring defense and 121st in total defense in Riley's first season at USC in 2022, and they were even worse in both categories the following season, 121st in scoring defense and 119th in total defense.

Alex Grinch, the former Oklahoma defensive coordinator, followed Riley to USC and led the Trojan defense in each of the last two seasons. What again is Einstein's theory of insanity?

Meanwhile, Oklahoma's offense continues to perform at an elite level in the two season without Riley in charge, but the big difference since last season is that the defense has made significant strides in getting better with Venables, a coach who has the same reputation defensively as Riley has achieved on offense.

The big difference between Venables and Riley is that OU has been able to bring in elite talent on both sides of the ball under Venables. Riley was outstanding in recruiting some of the best offensive prospects in the country and getting them to come to Oklahoma. Meanwhile, elite four- and five-star defensive players wouldn't give Oklahoma a second thought. Venables has dramatically changed that situation.

Riley has hired a new defensive coordinator, D'Anton Lynn, to lead the defensive charge as USC embarks on its maiden voyage into Big Ten Country this season. In the past few days, Venables and his defensive coaches earned another last laugh over Riley and USC, stealing elite defensive tackle Floyd Bouchard from under their nose. Rated four-stars by Rivals, The Canadian-born D-lineman for a long time was believed to be headed to USC. The Sooners had been trending upward in the recruitment of Bouchard ever since he visited the Norman campus in mid-June.

Oklahoma's 27-member 2024 freshman class includes 13 defensive players, nine of whom are four- or five-star prospects, and ranked seventh nationally, according to Rivals. In contrast, USC's 2024 recruiting class ranked 18th.

With a full arsenal of offensive weapons and little if any drop off expected offensively, and a defensive unit that is getting better every season under Venables, the Sooners are building a team that is much better prepared to compete with the best in the SEC than was the case when Riley thought he saw the writing on the wall and elected jump ship ahead of the move to the SEC.

The Sooners and their fans are in a better place, and they know it.