OU coach: California, here I come
More than 80 years after “The Grapes of Wrath” was published, we have another Oklahoma man heading west.
For Lincoln Riley, the University of Oklahoma head football coach, the land of milk and honey surfaces at the University of Southern California, which on Sunday landed the 38-year-old whiz kid in a genuine stunner.
With a 55-10 record in four years at OU, Riley lands at USC, which won national championships right and left with O.J. Simpson and others running “Student Body Left” and “Student Body Right.” The Trojans have become almost irrelevant nationally since Pete Carroll left for the Seattle Seahawks after coaching the Trojans to one national title and watching Texas quarterback Vince Young deprive him of another. Any decline in Pac-12 football (the conference has not placed one team in the College Football Playoff) can be traced to the skid at USC, which takes a 4-7 record into Saturday’s season finale against California.
Riley appeared to be the man for all seasons at Oklahoma, like Barry Switzer and Bob Stoops were for so long. Four Big 12 championships, four seasons of nine wins or better and, in the pandemic year, a Cotton Bowl victory in 2020, plus back-to-back Heisman Trophy winners in Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray.
Everything about Riley screamed winner, starting with his 2015 Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach while at OU and promotion, at 33, to succeed Stoops, “Big Game Bob,” who in 2000 coached the Sooners to their last national title.
The USC opening, which resulted from the early-season firing of Clay Helton, may have come at an opportune time for Riley. This fresh challenge may have erased what anguish he felt from his first Bedlam defeat, 37-33 to Oklahoma State, where talk that this may be it for Mike Gundy is in the wind. Not that there weren’t other openings with “help wanted” signs out at Florida and LSU.
(For sure, USC is one job that Lane Kiffin’s name would not appear among the leading candidates. USC athletic director Pat Haden fired Kiffin as Trojan coach on or close to an airport tarmac following a 62-41 loss to Arizona State in September 2013. His credibility challenged after leaving Tennessee abruptly after one season, Kiffin rehabilitated himself in coaching as an Alabama assistant under Nick Saban — who better? — and in two years has Ole Miss in the national top 10.)
Florida and LSU, each with multiple national championships in the last 15 years, are jobs that a hot young coach normally would snap at — not that anyone would leave OU voluntarily. But since both are in the Southeastern Conference, and Riley was said to be cool about Oklahoma’s impending switch to that league, USC might be made to order.
“Multiple coaches have said … that Oklahoma becomes a much harder job in the SEC,” The Athletic reported. “And they thought Riley would be wise to look elsewhere whether that was LSU or USC.”
Talk that Riley might leave OU surfaced after a November loss to Baylor. Riley played it cool with the writers after the Oklahoma State game, saying “I’m not going to be the head coach at LSU.”
(The late Larry Snyder, one of Oaklawn’s most beloved figures, had a similar switch pulled on him before the 1983 Arkansas Derby after riding Sunny’s Halo to victory in the Rebel Stakes. “They said they wouldn’t replace me with (Angel) Cordero,” Snyder recalled later. “They didn’t say anything about (Eddie) Delahoussaye.”)
On the last November Sunday, Riley dropped the biggest bombshell of the college-football season.
Florida, tired of choking on Georgia’s fumes, went out and hired Billy Napier from Louisiana-Lafayette to replace Dan Mullen. LSU, paying off former USC assistant Ed Orgeron two years after winning a national title, remains on the lookout.
All this happened on a football weekend that some going powers retreated slightly from traditional perches. Clemson, two national titles in the last six years, is out in the Atlantic Coast Conference (who thought to see Wake Forest playing for the ACC title if Tim Duncan weren’t involved?). Ohio State yielding the Big Ten crown required Jim Harbaugh, a Michigan man coaching Michigan, to beat the Buckeyes for the first time. A Baylor-Oklahoma State Big 12 championship game sounds fresh and new as a replacement for Oklahoma vs. Texas.
Only Alabama vs. Georgia in the SEC sounds chalky but took an Iron Bowl miracle by the Crimson Tide to come about.
All the more reason for Arkansas fans to embrace Sam Pittman two days after turning 60 and hanging up an 8-4 record with the Razorbacks. Talk about the right man in the right place at the right time.