Oklahoma Sooners AD Takes Shot At Lincoln Riley?

We are coming up on three years since Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma for the USC Trojans , and Sooners fans are still salty. Purley based on social media interaction and comments, USC might be Oklahoma’s most hated rival after Texas and Oklahoma State. If you don’t believe me, just check the comments after a USC loss or after a recruit decommits…some of you might be here reading this right now! Welcome!

Now it looks like Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione is the latest to join the craze.

Did Oklahoma’s AD Subliminally Blast Lincoln Riley?

When asked about the move to the SEC, which became official yesterday (July 1):

Every coach that we talked to was excited. The ones that weren’t aren’t here anymore…

There is no way of proving that this was directly about Lincoln Riley, but it is pretty easy to connect the dots. Once Riley left Oklahoma for USC the rumors began to swirl that he was not happy with the Sooners’ move to the SEC. Some blogs and fans went as far as to say that he was scared of SEC competition.

Speaking with the 247Sports College Football Daily Podcast , Riley denied that he was afraid of moving to the SEC.

“No, there’s not any truth to that,” Riley said.

“I mean, I took a pretty big job when I was 33 years old. And the reality of the matter is the easier thing for me would’ve been to stay at OU. I mean, that program was running at a high level. And, family’s settled, staff’s settled.

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“I mean, a lot of things that were going really well – and I absolutely think will continue to go well; it’s a tremendous program. So that program’s going to be just fine. But the easier thing would’ve been to stay. And it’s tremendous in every sense.

“But the chance to do this at this place, combined with some of the opportunities for my family off the field — the life away from it, the chance to live in this place, educational opportunities — it was just, at the end of the day, it just really was the right place at the right time.

“And if you’re afraid of a challenge, you don’t take the head coaching job at OU when you’re 33 years old. You don’t come out to USC to do this. I mean, that’s — the people that know us and know us well know we embrace those things, just like we’re going to embrace it here.”

Regardless of what some people think, Lincoln Riley will now lead the USC Trojans program into the Big Ten. But there is one thing that all of college football probably wants…a USC-Oklahoma showdown in the College Football Playoff.

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