Lincoln Riley: 'Not Any Truth' to the Idea He Left Oklahoma to Avoid the SEC
Former Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley may have thought he cleared the air a couple weeks back with his piece in The Players Tribune.
But the new USC coach continues to get asked about his time at Oklahoma – and his motivation for leaving.
On Monday, in an appearance on “The College Football Daily Podcast” with Brandon Marcello of 247 Sports, Riley said a fear of competition from OU’s coming membership in the Southeastern Conference didn’t steer him out of Norman.
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"No, there's not any truth to that," Riley said. "I mean, I took a pretty big job when I was 33 years old. And the reality of the matter is the easier thing for me would've been to stay at OU. I mean, that program was running at a high level. And, family's settled, staff's settled. I mean, a lot of things that were going really well – and I absolutely think will continue to go well; it's a tremendous program. So that program's going to be just fine. But the easier thing would've been to stay. And it's tremendous in every sense.
"But the chance to do this at this place, combined with some of the opportunities for my family off the field — the life away from it, the chance to live in this place, educational opportunities — it was just, at the end of the day, it just really was the right place at the right time. And if you're afraid of a challenge, you don't take the head coaching job at OU when you're 33 years old. You don't come out to USC to do this. I mean, that's — the people that know us and know us well know we embrace those things, just like we're going to embrace it here.”
Riley was on his way to legend status when he left Oklahoma following a loss to Oklahoma State in the season finale. After the program’s first 9-0 start in 18 years, the Sooners lost two of their last three.
In the aftermath of Riley’s departure, several Sooner players transferred to USC, and a handful of OU verbal commitments flipped their pledge to the Trojans.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Riley’s representatives had been in contact with USC since October, and his harshest critics suggest he and several staffers were distracted as his team underachieved most of the season.
A week before he hired Brent Venables to replace Riley, OU athletic director Joe Castiglione said Riley hadn’t been averse to competing in the SEC.
“We talked about that with him,” Castiglione said on Nov. 29. “:He was engaged in our thoughts about it, and he was definitely on board with it and any conversation since the announcement was made, continued to be on board with it. … We were talking about the resources and the process and things we were going to want to have in place as we moved towards the transition, whenever that occurs.”
As for Riley, he told Marcello that the timing of The Players Tribune piece wasn’t his decision, but it was his feelings.
“Yeah, I mean, I wrote it several weeks back,” Riley said. “It was difficult to kind of express it all and I wanted to find the right kind of route to say some things that I wanted to say. I didn't write it to get a reaction to try to change anybody's mind. That was not my goal in it. My goal was — (the job change) happened so suddenly. One day, I'm the coach at the other spot. And then, all of a sudden, this happens and it goes so quick.
“And I just never really felt like I had the right time to say some of the things that I wanted to say. You sit there and all these other people want to determine the narrative about what happened or want to define it. Guess what? This is my life. And I felt like that there were some things that I simply wanted to say. So it was a good — felt like the right route to do it and glad I was able to get it done and kind of say my piece and be able to move on.”
