Has Lincoln Riley suffered bad losses? Sure he has. He allowed a big lead against Kansas State at home to turn into a gut-punch loss for Oklahoma. He has been ambushed by Iowa State. He lost to Texas in 2018 with a team which was clearly better.
Of course Riley has lost games his teams frankly should have won.
A viewer of our USC live show with Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football made the point that Lincoln Riley loses games he’s not supposed to.
Technically, narrowly, of course he has lost a few of those games … but this is not a significant, salient, meaningful criticism. It is value-free.
First of all, every coach has lost a game he was supposed to lose. Show me a coach who has not. Nick Saban? He lost to Texas A&M last year. He lost to Ole Miss multiple times when Hugh Freeze coached the Rebels. His Alabama teams blew leads against Auburn on multiple occasions.
Dabo Swinney, Ryan Day, Pete Carroll, Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, John McKay, Ara Parseghian — they all lost games they should have won. No one is exempt from this.
When we say “a coach loses games he’s not supposed to,” the underlying point is that a coach regularly squanders opportunities and fails to get the most out of his talent.
A good example: Scott Satterfield at Louisville. Scott Frost at Nebraska. Neal Brown at West Virginia. Chip Kelly at UCLA. Those coaches are regularly losing games they shouldn’t lose. Those coaches are in varying degrees of trouble.
Lincoln Riley has not yet lost more than two games in any season as a college head coach. One of the two losses in most of those seasons was a College Football Playoff semifinal. Riley’s second loss of 2021 at Oklahoma was against an Oklahoma State team which nearly reached the College Football Playoff.
Talking points in an argument need to be used in proper context and proportion. This talking point on Lincoln Riley completely misses the mark. We explained this on The Voice of College Football:
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