The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

So, back to Lincoln Riley, a.k.a. Muleshoe.  I thought that he was a good coach and at the same time thought that he would never win a national championship at OU.  His "safe" call to kick a FG in the 1st OT against Georgia in the Rose Bowl playoff game, and his continued defense of it afterward, told me that he did not have the cojones to win it all.  A lot of OU fans (probably most) disagreed with me.  And, even if I were correct (and I was), I couldn't hope that he would get fired.  On his watch, OU produced 2 Heisman winners and another finalist, won 4 straight conference championships, went to 3 CFPs, went 5-1 against Texas.  Even I realized that you don't fire a guy with that record.  But I did hope that he would get better.

Anyway, Muleshoe announcing he was going to USC, after his agent had spent half the season dropping teasers about LSU, angered me, because of his dishonest actions leading up to it, but it didn't leave me devastated.  And Bob Stoops coming on board to do whatever was necessary to provide continuity until a new coach was named and got up and running--including, as it turned out, coaching the bowl game--was a bigger positive than perhaps folks who are not OU fans understand.

Emotionally, the choice of Brent Venables was the best possible outcome.  The fan-base reaction has been that we will no longer have a defense that gets pushed around and at times looks clueless.  The team will be stronger and tougher.  Players will be developed better.  Standards of behavior on and off the field will be higher.  So far, it's all positive.*

Obviously, how the team performs on the field will be the bottom line.

* My one reservation, amidst the warm, fuzzy feelings, is about OC Jeff Lebby.  He didn't play much--if at all--but he was on the OU roster in the early '00s.  He got injured and became a student assistant.  After coaching a year at Victoria (Texas) Memorial HS, he became an assistant at Baylor.  Somewhere along the way, he married Art Briles' daughter.  He was at Baylor when all the ugly gang-bang activities on the football team were going down.  He was named by one of the rape victims as one of the coaches who was told about the actions and did nothing.  IMO, he's never come clean about this.  And, last I read, he still owns a "Support Coach Art Briles" website.

So, I have that reservation.  It's the same one I have about Tulsa's HFC, Philip Montgomery.  He came to TU from Baylor before the scandal broke, talking about how Art Briles was a "second father" to him.  Now he won't discuss the subject.

I get what you're saying, but with that maturity should come the ability to acknowledge the mistakes you made that allowed that rape culture to go on.  I haven't heard that acknowledgement.

OTOH, the consensus of opinion about him from the players and coaches he's dealt with since he left Baylor has been very positive.  I'd just like to see (from him and from Philip Montgomery) a glimmer of admission than he didn't handle the situation as well as he wished he had.

Sort of like I would have liked to see Muleshoe acknowledge that he erred in kicking the FG against Georgia in the Rose Bowl.

But coaches are loath to admit any sort of mistake.  They're like John Wayne's character Nathan Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon: "Never apologize, mister, it's a sign of weakness.”

EDIT: Here's a short commentary on refusing to apologize.

OU had 7 guys drafted over the past 2 days.  None in the 1st round, and 2 or 3 of whom should have stayed another year to improve their stock, so it was by no means an outstanding draft class.

But Texas had none.  Not even Dicker the kicker.

That astounds me.

you'd think the Sooners would have performed better with all that NFL talent

Heh!

All that talent was wasted when the HFC (Muleshoe) knew that he was on the way out the door.  And that making it into the Big 12 CCG (and potentially the CFP) would complicate things for his transition.

I don't know that Muleshoe threw those last two games, but I think that I could have called a better game than he did in the season-ending oSu game.

OU had 7 guys drafted over the past 2 days.  None in the 1st round, and 2 or 3 of whom should have stayed another year to improve their stock, so it was by no means an outstanding draft class.

But Texas had none.  Not even Dicker the kicker.

That astounds me.

I remember in the fran years, things got lean.  We maybe had 1-2 guys drafted at the most.  Maybe we even had one year where we had none drafted.  The funny thing is that fran recruited Von Miller and Ryan Tannehill.  

I think we had 4-5 guys drafted this year, and one first rounder.  

Three weeks ago, OU was sitting in the high 20s/low 30s in 2023 recruiting rankings. Now the Sooners are #11 in Rivals, #10 in 24/7, with some big targets still out there. (UT is #3 and #5 by those two metrics, FWIW.)


Brent Venables has been killing it in recruiting since the big BBQ recruiting event in late June.

From all accounts, the coaching is better, the culture is better, and the S&C program is better.

If Brent can coach a lick on game day, the Sooners should be OK.

Yep.  But can he coach the whole team on game day?