How 2010 Alamo Bowl prepared Riley
Ruffin McNeill has a favorite Lincoln Riley story.
It’s one he’s repeated dozens of times in the last couple months since his mentee ascended to the Oklahoma head coach position.
And it’s one that foreshadowed Riley’s ability to seamlessly handle a chaotic situation long before Bob Stoops’ June decision that unexpectedly elevated his assistant to Oklahoma’s head coach in mere minutes.
Days before Texas Tech was slated to play Michigan State in the January 2010 Alamo Bowl, Red Raider head coach Mike Leach was suspended, creating an immediate vacancy at head coach and play-caller.
McNeill, then the defensive coordinator, took over as interim head coach and immediately brought 26-year-old Riley out of the coaching box and onto the field as TTU’s offensive coordinator and play-caller.
It was to be a onenight-only event, a chance for each to audition for big-time positions and salvage a season
that was overshadowed by Leach’s suspension and ultimate firing.
While Leach and ESPN commentator Craig James publicly fought over Leach’s treatment of James’ son Adam, Riley threw himself into the poring over game plans to avoid the chaos.
“I’d been in the box for two years, I think, so it was a little bit different getting down on the field,” Riley said. “Even when you see it every day in practice it’s different when you’ve been up there and you get back down.
“My preparation, it actually worked out fine because it was such a media circus around there that all I did was go to practice and then go stay in my hotel room the whole time. I never left. I had to have something to do.”
Each passed the test with flying colors, but Riley particularly stood out that night.
To hear McNeill tell it, It was like watching a maestro fluidly conduct a 100piece orchestra.
“I wish I would’ve recorded him and his play-calling,” McNeill said. “He was decisive, precise and innovative in that game and did a really good job. You go back and you look at that game and look at how the offense produced and you’ll see.”
Riley was a natural, and his offense responded like he’d been calling plays all along with 579 yards of total offense and a 41-31 win against Michigan State.
“From the get-go, his swag that he had, just the look on his face was like, ‘We got it,’” said Lyle Leong, a wide receiver on that Texas Tech team. “The way he called plays, he had it. From the first play to the end play, he called a great game and everything flowed together. We didn’t miss a beat.”
A couple days later, McNeill was heading to East Carolina as the Pirates’ head coach, and Riley was going with him as the offensive coordinator.
That Alamo Bowl, though merely a blip in the grand scheme of his life and coaching career, was the first sign that Riley was on the coaching fast track. Though it was just one game, that quick transition was even more monumental than taking over the reins of Oklahoma football from Stoops.
“Doing it at a bowl game, just a few days before a game and then both of us being thrust into roles that we had never been in, it was a lot different feeling when you’re head coach retires because he wants to go live his life and your head coach is fired just immediately,” Riley said. “That’s a different feeling because you’re coaching that and then you’re wondering what you’re going to do next year, how am I going to take care of my family next year. There was lot going on at that point.”