Plot twist: Many Oklahoma fans are sincerely grateful to Lincoln Riley for leaving OU

With Brent Venables recruiting up a storm in Norman, lots of Oklahoma fans are sincerely and unironically thanking Lincoln Riley for leaving the Sooners.

USC fans might have a certain degree of interest in how Oklahoma performs this year. However, Trojan fans are focused on what their own team is going to do in 2022. OU is clearly a sidebar story with second-tier status.

If you aren’t closely following Sooner football, you should know that Oklahoma is recruiting at a very high level under new coach Brent Venables. The success of OU recruiting is leading a lot of Sooner fans to sincerely and unironically thank Lincoln Riley for leaving so that Venables could raise the bar for the program.

OU insider Kegan Reneau noted that Venables is getting the resources Riley did not get. Therefore, Riley awakened in the OU program an awareness of doing more to put the football program in position to succeed.

Riley really did help OU by leaving OU. Fascinating, is it not?

“It’s such a compelling story,” Reneau said. “We will never know. Lincoln, as I said during his (USC introductory) press conference, told us every reason why he left Oklahoma in the first 10 minutes of that press conference without actually saying it. He mentioned alignment multiple times. He mentioned resources multiple times in his press conference, kind of throwing some shots (at Oklahoma).

“But what’s so funny: I also tweeted after that happened that the Oklahoma fan base should be thankful for Lincoln, because the next head coach is gonna get everything that Lincoln Riley wasn’t going to get. And guess what?”

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