OU’s Riley hires mentor McNeill
Former Texas Tech assistant will guide defensive tackles.
Lincoln Riley, who has been the head coach of Okla- homa for a week, announced Wednesday that he has added mentor Ruffin McNeill to his coaching staff.
McNeill takes the assistant coaching spot vacated by Riley when he was promoted last week after the sudden retirement of head coach Bob Stoops. McNeill will coach defensive tackles and serve as an assistant head coach.
McNeill was the specialteams coach at Texas Tech when Riley walked on with the Red Raiders. They were later on the coaching staff together when McNeill was Tech’s defensive coordinator under head coach Mike Leach.
McNeill was the head coach at East Carolina in 2010 when he hired Riley, then 26, to be his offensive coordinator. McNeill spent last season as assistant head coach at Virginia, where he also coached the defensive line.
“I’m very excited that Ruffin McNeill is joining our coaching staff,” Riley said in a statement. “I have a great history with him from our time together at Texas Tech and East Carolina. We’re getting an extremely high-quality person and coach. Our team and fans will love the personality and energy he’ll bring to our program.”
McNeill said: “I’ve been at every level and have done it a lot of different ways. I’ve been fortunate to work with great people. I’ve had the big-picture view of a head coach, I’ve been a defensive coordinator and I’ve been a special teams coor- dinator, so I think I have some things I bring to the table. I absolutely love coaching the players. I love that part. I’m excited to do that here. Can’t wait to get on the field, get in the meeting rooms, talk strategy, talk life. That’s what I’ve always been known for; being a hard worker and a team guy. I believe it’s team and family first, last and always. Lincoln and his wife, Caitlin, are family to me. I’ve known him since he was 18 years old when he was a freshman at Texas Tech.”
Riley indicated he will final- ize other staff assignments in the next few days.
Calvin Thibodeaux, a former OU standout, will focus on defensive ends. He had been in charge of the entire defen- sive line the past two years.
Texas A&M: Former quarterback Jerrod John- son is headed to the NFL as a coach. The San Francisco 49ers announced Tuesday that Johnson and six others were hired as part of the Bill Walsh NFL Diversity Coach- ing Fellowship Program.
Johnson will work with 49ers quarterbacks. The group will be on the coaching staff during this summer’s preseason training camp.
The diversity program was started by Walsh so minority coaches could receive more and better opportunities. All 32 NFL teams participate in the program.
After leaving A&M as the program’s all-time leading passer, Johnson spent time with five NFL teams as a player.
He’s been the lead instructor at The Quarterback Club of Houston and has worked as a coach with the Nike Elite 11 quarterback camps and competitions. frames the fairways at Erin Hills, is the house where he is staying.
It has a double-spiral staircase.
“I sit down when I go down the stairs now,” Johnson said with a smile. “I slide down on my butt.”
Stairs were the only thing that could stop him earlier this year. A winner of three straight tournaments — against the strongest fields of the year — Johnson slipped in his socks going downstairs to move his car in the rain on the eve of the Masters and bruised his back so badly that he had to withdraw the next day.
He hasn’t won in four starts since then, and he concedes he lost some momentum.
Even so, he is the betting favorite at the 117th U.S. Open on a course that would appear to suit his game perfectly, especially with more rain Wednesday afternoon and a forecast for occasional storms on Friday and Saturday. The greens are soft enough that Johnson is getting yardages to the hole, knowing his shots won’t bounce away too far.
“I hope they play it all the way back on every hole,” he said. “Why not? It’s going to be soft. I hope it’s windy. I hope it’s long, but it doesn’t matter.”
Johnson isn’t one to feel much pressure — he doesn’t show much, anyway — even playing his first major as the No. 1 player.
If anything, the pressure is on the USGA in how they set up the golf course, and the meteorologist to give an accurate forecast of the wind. There are a few holes at Erin Hills where if the tees are all the way back and the wind shifts into the players, some won’t be able to reach the fairway or will face blind shots. “It’s nerve-wracking, honestly, more than most Open sites,” USGA executive director Mike Davis said.
Johnson isn’t the only long hitter whom Erin Hills favors. Rory McIlroy, who crushed U.S. Open scoring records on a rain-softened course at Congressional in 2011, was delighted to feel the soft turf under his feet.
Jason Day is starting to turn his game around, finally. Along with his power, Day is an expert with the short game, which should come in handy around the greens that feature shaved slopes instead of dense rough.
Johnson, however, is such an intimidating figure that even Curtis Strange is a little nervous.
Strange, who now works for Fox Spor ts as t he on-course analyst, won the 1989 U.S. Open at Oak Hill to become the first player since Ben Hogan (1950-51) to win the U.S. Open in con- secutive years. “Move over, Ben,” Strange famously said after his second title.
“I’ve got to tell you, it’s tailor-made for Dustin Johnson,” Strange said after his first look at the course.
The Masters (three times) and the PGA Championship in stroke play (twice, by Tiger Woods) have fewer back-toback winners than the U.S. Open, but it’s the major that has gone the longest without a repeat winner.
The closest call for Strange was in 2005 when defending champion Retief Goosen had a three-shot lead at Pinehurst No. 2. He shot 81 in the final round. Four-time champion Jack Nicklaus never went back-to-back. Neither did Woods.
“You’ve got to be lucky, have it be the right time,” Strange said. “Dustin is more dominant than anybody who has ever done it back-to-back because of his length and the whole bit. But you still have to do it.”
Johnson starts out Thursday morning with the last two U.S. Open champions, Martin Kaymer and Jordan Spieth. It’s a comfortable group, especially with Spieth, a close friend, his partner from the Presidents Cup and his regular pro partner in recent years at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.