It’s a time old story… Boy meets university, boy has success at university and university offers boy large extension. This is the case for Oklahoma Head Coach, Lincoln Riley. Over the New Year, Riley had agreed in principal to what sound like a very long-term deal with a nice raise on top of it. The exact parameters aren’t disclosed yet and will be relayed to the public when they decide at the board of regents meeting later this month.
The extension that Riley has in place changes the landscape of college football and the NFL tremendously. Riley, 35, isn’t quite as pretty as Kliff Kingsbury so you knew he wasn’t going to be eyeing up the Miami job to go show off his abs on the beach. With all the success he had over the past two seasons, taking over for Bob Stoops, Riley could’ve also eyed up a chance at the NFL. He could advertise himself as another Sean McVay. However, I’m sure he knows that there is only one McVay.
The other important thing to realize is that he has coached two straight Heisman trophy winners. Both quarterbacks with incredible athletic ability. I think the important thing to realize is that Riley wouldn’t be like a McVay because he’s a young offensive minded coach. I think with what he has done in the 2 years at OU that he should be more compared to Andy Reid. They are both quarterback gurus and very clearly have a winning pedigree.
The NFL had 7 teams with head coaching positions unfilled after the end of the season. With Riley staying and taking the extension at Oklahoma there is a domino effect that occurs within people’s coaching trees. First it makes some of the most highly coveted jobs USC and Miami go unfulfilled and that includes the NFL jobs. That means somebody has to get hired. When they pull somebody who got fired that means another job opens up. This means all the biggest names get pulled first. That leaves jobs like Temple’s head coaching job to be left open and left to be filled by somebody with an unproven pedigree. Which makes the coaching carousel so fun.
Overall, I think that Riley’s extension will change the entire football landscape for the foreseeable future. Why? He has Oklahoma in a position to be a perennial CFP team and that means other teams aren’t going to be able to have that ability. Lincoln Riley could easily be the next Nick Saban or Dabo Swinney. When we find out the rest of the specifics later this month, we could be seeing the beginning of the next college football dynasty.