Lincoln Riley departure labeled 'best thing that ever happened to Oklahoma football' ahead of SEC move

The Oklahoma Sooners are officially in the SEC. It’s a move that’s been such a long time coming that the move was announced when Lincoln Riley was still the head coach in Norman.

While speaking to Eddie Radosevich and George Stoia of Sooner Scoop on Andy Staples On3, Staples brought up how much has changed within the program since Brent Venables replaced Lincoln Riley, which Radosevich made it clear how good of a move that was for Oklahoma.

“I think it might be the best thing that ever happened to Oklahoma football,” Radosevich said. “Revisionist history, obviously.”

Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma following the 2021 season to take the USC job. He was then replaced by Brent Venables who has much more of a defensive-minded approach to football and has been rebuilding the program in his image.

“We’ll see with Brent because I think there’s still some skepticism there,” Stoia said. “I certainly think you love the recruiting side of it. The leaps they’ve made on defense and everybody expects them to have a very good defense this year. We’ll see if he can still improve in terms of being kind of a CEO head coach and game management and all that comes with that. Obviously, he made two big hires this offseason. We’ll see how those pan out with Seth Littrell as the offensive coordinator and Zac Alley coming in as a co-defensive coordinator and kind of taking the reigns.”

In his two seasons at Oklahoma, Venables has a 16-10 record. It’s not bad but also not as good as many fans expect. Still, the Sooners are recruiting well under him with the ninth-ranked recruiting class in the 2024 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Rankings. So, there is reason to be excited about the future.

The bigger concern for George Stoia is simply that what Oklahoma was doing under Lincoln Riley wasn’t sustainable. The hope is that what Brent Venables is doing right now is able to build a base for long-term success, even if it’s unproven to this point.

“But, in terms of where this was heading under Lincoln Riley, there was a lot of holes that I think were covered up in terms of roster management or, obviously, the defensive side of the football by great quarterback play because they had all these great quarterbacks, Caleb Williams obviously the last one, and you look back at that 2021 season that was such a roller coaster of a year where they’re playing a bunch of close games, they lost games that they shouldn’t, and really the only reason they won as many games as they did is because Caleb Williams was so special and that offense was so special,” Stoia said.

“And you’re seeing that kind of at USC now where it kind of covered some things up for them in terms of recruiting or if it was the defense being a liability, I think as a program and as a team, you’re seeing top to bottom it’s just a better culture, one, and also, two, roster in terms of how many elite guys they have on both sides of the football. So, I think in that sense definitely. We’ll see, though, like I said, if Brent can — this is a big year for him. Eight wins could be good. Nine wins would be great. 10 wins would be sensational. So, we’ll see. The verdict is still out on Brent, but I do think they’re in a better spot than they were under Lincoln.”

One major issue for Brent Venables has been close games. In his two seasons, the Sooners have a record of just 3-7 in one-score games. If Venables wants to find success and prove that he’s the right choice for Oklahoma football, figuring that out is key.

“The biggest thing for Oklahoma going into this year, and when you look at the schedule and you see how many close games you’re gonna be playing, the one score games has not been kind to Oklahoma over the first two seasons under Brent Venables,” Radosevich said.

“They’re gonna have to find ways to change that because I think you expect, you just kind of know going into this conference, with this schedule particularly, you’re gonna be in tight ball games late in the third and fourth quarter, and if you’re leaving on a freshman quarterback…you’re gonna have to find ways to win some of these one-score games.”