Life has a way of throwing a boomerang at all of us at some point. If fans dish out some smack talk to a rival fan base, the things they say eventually come back around and hit them in the face. If other fans deliver an unceasing amount of heckling or hounding, something will happen to turn the tables in the other direction.
Such is the case in the relationship between USC and Oklahoma football fans.
As soon as Lincoln Riley went to USC, Oklahoma fans have been telling USC fans how bad they will have it. Lincoln Riley is overrated, Riley won’t insist on a good defense, Riley won’t hire a better defensive coordinator.
To be sure, Oklahoma fans have been proved right this year on many fronts. However, Riley has fired Alex Grinch, something a lot of people never thought he would do. Riley now has a chance to prove a lot of Oklahoma fans wrong.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s season has taken a drastically bad turn over the past few weeks. The Sooners were looking great under head coach Brent Venables, but coordinator Jeff Lebby’s offense has gotten stuck. Dillon Gabriel’s Heisman Trophy candidacy has been derailed. The Sooners are in trouble in terms of making the Big 12 Championship Game, which would rate as a considerable disappointment.
Everything Oklahoma fans have said about Riley not firing Grinch can now be turned in the direction of Brent Venables for not yet firing Jeff Lebby.
Oklahoma fans thought they had the high ground for a bit, but now, they’re basically in the same position USC fans inhabited for the past two years: They want their head coach to fire their coordinator so that the program can figure out how to have a good offense and a good defense at the same time.
Oklahoma has the D without the O. USC is the opposite. In the end, both schools have half of a solution but not a whole one.
Life is strange.
Let’s see how Oklahoma fans are handling Jeff Lebby’s disastrous turn as offensive coordinator, the offense-based version of what Alex Grinch was for USC’s defense: