I've had time to digest it - If you want to hear some rambling on it do so here but this will a bit different.
I suspect most people felt Riley was going to be off to some gig in December - Perhaps the Vols, A&M or Texas Tech - we expected the man to be the next "IT" coach . I see talk about his experience and getting this job now by writers. My question is - what was Lincoln going to learn between June and December when he took over somewhere else? There's not some great knowledge he was going to develop in six months.. Lincoln's intangibles are there now.
Lincoln will clearly learn on the job, I suspect we'll encounter growing pains in '18 (I do believe the make up of this years squad provides a lot of cover) . I'm not so much of a homer to think OU won't skip a beat but i don't think expectations should be that much different
Expectations this year?
I think 10-2 - seems to be a reasonable- This team is capable of that and more -They have one difficult road games and one difficult neutral site game. I suspect they split 50/50 - and how those wins break probably determine if OU is a playoff contender or not. .
Like I said above - No one will truly know anything about Riley's coaching ability as HC until 2018, I'm not a sunshine pumper - Oklahoma did the best possible thing for itself - OU secured an elite OC/who was going to be line for a major gig with no drama or tension among our donors.
I think the seamless nature of the transinition is lost on most people. This just isn't how it is done in this day and age. This may be the first time the "HCIW" thing actually worked swimmingly, simply because Bob Stoops was ready for retirement. Lincoln star rose quick in Norman, he was getting rave reviews from people even before Oklahoma played a down under him - There had been talk about potentially him replacing Bob - but I simply chocked that up to wishful thinking - I had no idea Bob was ready to GTFO this soon - I had suspected Riley may go elsewhere this December and return in two or three years. I never suspected this situation, and few did honestly.
I think I'm looking forward to the subtle differences in the program honestly - we don't know a lot about how Riley is going to do things outside of recruiting* . What I mean by subtle changes is: How is he going to structure practices? Are practices going to be re-open? What tree will he reach to when he needs to make a hire?
***Recruiting Changes**** I touched on it in the podcast linked above but Riley is a 180 from Bob when it comes to recruiting - simply put - he takes to it and he loves it. We're going to have a much more "in your face" recruiting footprint going forward.
Anyway this has been an absurd week, but buckle up - recruiting is about to get a little wild.
