Lincoln Riley isn’t afraid to speak his mind, and he didn’t when asked about two things related to the NCAA on Tuesday.
Oklahoma has been dealing with three players who were suspended for the 2019 Peach Bowl due to a failed marijuana drug test prior to the game. Missing Ronnie Perkins was paramount to the Sooners’ success against LSU in that game, but the absences of Rhamondre Stevenson and Trejan Bridges could also be felt.
The NCAA rules state that ‘the penalty for a positive test for a substance in the cannabinoid class is withholding from competition for 50% of the season in all sports in which the student-athlete participates.’ That would mean these players would miss five or six games in normal 12-game season or four or five games in this ten game season. How many these players are missing due to the shortened scheduled has yet to be determined.
Riley was asked about it during his weekly press conference on Tuesday, calling the rule ‘archaic’ and letting out some real thoughts on the matter.
“I think in a sense, we’ve all … we’re not sitting there dwelling on it day to day,” he said. “It has been a challenging year for the NCAA. There’s a lot on their plate right now, but this is a big issue. It is. And it’s a much bigger issue than these three players, and I think maybe that’s part of why the process has been a little bit slower than all of us would like, but you’re talking about an archaic rule within the NCAA. You’re talking about a world that has really changed on that subject. It’s a big deal. It is. The unfortunate matter is, you could go have a first positive test at just about any NCAA school in the country and you’re gonna get counseling and you’re gonna get all the support that you need at so many of these great schools, and right now, studies are showing that’s how you win. That’s how you beat this. That’s how you actually help a player, help a person that has made a mistake.
“I think a lot of these schools have figured that out. There have been some really positive trends and I think development’s there. The fact that if you have the same test from the NCAA, you miss six games, and the disparity between that … it’s not right. I am confident that it’s gonna get fixed or head to a more appropriate spot. And again, my experience for that comes from the players you see over the years and how could we have helped them, how could we have done better. Right now, it’s about that. I don’t know if something will change in time to affect these guys, obviously for their sake, I hope it does, because it is really severe, especially when only a couple of teams in the country a year get tested. But they made a mistake and they’re living with the consequences right now and hopefully something gets changed before that. If not, hopefully it’ll get changed for all the rest of the players and for the good of the game.”
The marijuana policy wasn’t all that Riley was asked about from an NCAA perspective on Tuesday.
The NCAA announced an extension of the ongoing recruiting dead period that prohibits schools from hosting recruits for visits and coaches to go see recruits on the road. The 2021 recruiting class, if a recruit signs in Dec., will not be able to see a schools’ campus with a tour from coaches at all.
It doesn’t make much sense to Oklahoma’s head coach.
“I really don’t understand it at all,” Riley said. “Everything we were told and led to believe was it was going to continue to be a month-to-month decision and obviously monitor COVID and travel and all that goes with that. So for us to just jump ahead and do that, I have no explanation. We as coaches have received no explanation about it. I was shocked because it’s important that these guys are able to go see these places and not saying it’s going to be able to happen but it might be able to happen. And for us to close the door on it so quickly, I, like most of my peers I’ve had a chance to speak with were caught off guard with really zero explanation for it and I don’t really understand it at all.”
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