TwitLonger
Note on the nature of Riley's divorce with OklahomaVIP
Parker Thune avatar
Parker Thune
STAFF
Posted on 3 mins, V I P, User Since 11 months ago, User Post Count: 1410
3 mins
VIP
11 months
1410
Just received a text from a source that should give you some semblance of an idea how this all unfolded:
"Riley was not open to negotiation [from Oklahoma]."
This comes less than 24 hours after he said the following when asked about the Oklahoma athletic administration:
“I have no concerns about our administration, our A.D., our president. We’ve been through a lot together. This isn’t our first rodeo together. So, we always have conversations about the future. And certainly with all that’s changing right now in the college landscape, all that’s getting ready to change, for us, at some point here we transition into a new conference, those are always conversations that we’re going to have, and we would be having those yearly no matter what. We’re always, all of us are trying to make this place better, make this program better. And so you don’t do that without working together, conversing with each other. So, of course we’re going to continue to do that. We work well together, and we’re going to keep working well together.”
Take that for what you will. But for those of you that said it seemed as though Lincoln Riley was coaching with one foot out the door, there's certainly some growing merit to that perspective.
One source actually told me several days ago, "The team thinks he's getting ready to leave." I initially didn't report that because we had good intel on the situation with LSU, and we were pretty certain he wasn't taking that job. The variable we (and everyone) failed to consider was the USC job, which we all probably should have paid a bit more attention to, especially given that Riley had shifted the focus of his recruiting efforts to the West Coast and zeroed in on several of USC's priority targets. It also wasn't difficult to foresee that job opening up several months and even a year ago, which would have allowed Riley to subtly get the pieces in place.
In sum, I'm beginning to get the sense that this might have been in the works a lot longer than anyone knew. If that's the case, it's even more of a back-stab for the players and recruits who took Riley at his word when he said he wasn't going anywhere
