Fans roast Lincoln Riley, Steve Sarkisian ahead of Red River Showdown

The Red River Showdown between Oklahoma and Texas is on Saturday, but the rivalry is already reaching a boiling point. Head coaches Lincoln Riley and Steve Sarkisian started trending on Twitter on Thursday afternoon as fans started roasting the opposing coaches.

These are just some of the most popular burns:

Lincoln Riley commemorates his big 12 championships with small tattoos on his lower back that he proudly refers to as his champ stamps.

— Medicine Man (@pukeSKYhopper) October 7, 2021

Steve Sarkisian orders a Pup-a-Chino at Starbucks for himself.

— Austin Wood (@AWood405) October 7, 2021

Lincoln Riley
Will give you up
Will let you down
Will run around and desert you
Will make you cry
Will say goodbye
Will tell a lie and hurt you

— WendyKJ 🤘🏻🧡 (@WendyKJ) October 7, 2021

Steve Sarkisian thinks Lou Holtz invented "Play Like a Champion Today"…

— David Vineyard (@DavidVineyard9) October 7, 2021

Lincoln Riley thinks McDonald's is better than Whataburger.

— Tarik D. LaCour (@realscientistic) October 7, 2021

Steve Sarkisian enjoys road construction on I-35

— Adam Masters (@SniperMasters) October 7, 2021

Lincoln Riley pronounces the “p” in raspberry.

— Fancy Boots (@TexasFancyBoots) October 7, 2021

Steve Sarkisian thinks a lot of the things A&M fans do make a lot of sense.

— Mark (@markaduck) October 7, 2021

Lincoln Riley passes out raisins on Halloween #OUHateWeek #Texas

— Kayla Mills (@KMilly33) October 7, 2021

The tweets are just the latest antics leading up to the top-25 shootout down in the Lone Star State.

On Tuesday, the Texas Department of Transportation returned to the annual tradition of trolling Sooners fans with road signs on I-35. I-35 is the highway connecting Norman, Oklahoma, to Dallas. You’d really have to go out of your way to miss them.

The signs read: “The eyes of TX are upon you, OU sucks.”

Big stage for Riley, Sarkisian on Saturday

The Red River Showdown is always well-attended but this year the ESPN College GameDay crew will also be in Dallas for the annual game between OU and Texas.

Lincoln Riley and the No. 6 Sooners remain undefeated with a 5-0 record heading into Week 6. Quarterback Spencer Rattler led the Sooners over Kansas State 37-31 to keep the loss column clear last Saturday.

This season, Oklahoma has beaten Tulane, Western Carolina, Nebraska, West Virginia and Kansas State.

Unlike OU, No. 21 Texas is heading into the game with an imperfect record. The Longhorns took down TCU 32-27 on Saturday. A week two loss versus Arkansas is their only blemish. The Horns have also notched wins versus Louisiana, Rice and Texas Tech.

Sarkisian spoke with reporters about how he judges his team’s progress no matter what outside parties use as a benchmark.

“The peripheral puts measuring sticks on us of where we are,” Sarkisian explained. “For us, our process is our process and we have to wire in and respect every opponent we play and make sure we’re putting our best foot forward.

“And I think that when you take over a program you always want the big leaps and bounds, and the growth and all those things, but for me the positive has been — I really believe that we’re making incremental progress as a program in a lot of different phases. In the end when you’re playing the team that over recent history has won the conference, well here’s an opportunity to basically see ‘where are we at this point?’ And we look forward to the challenge — we’re going to find out.”

On3’s Austin Brezina contributed to this report.