USC lands Lincoln Riley as head coach, Billy Napier to Florida; where does that leave LSU and Oklahoma?
Stunning news from college football on Sunday as Lincoln Riley is reportedly heading to Southern Cal.
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Two of the best college football head coaching jobs were filled on Sunday. Billy Napier will leave Louisiana for the University of Florida, which wasn't a surprise. However, Lincoln Riley leaving SEC-bound Oklahoma for Southern Cal – first reported by The Athletic's Bruce Feldman -- was an absolute stunner and a grand-slam hire by the Trojans in what has been a massively disappointing season for them and the Pac-12 overall. USC closes its 2021 season Saturday with a meaningless makeup game at Cal that was postponed from a few weeks ago when the Bears were dealing with a COVID outbreak.
Riley had been linked to the LSU opening – so had Napier, for that matter. Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff has to be smiling from ear-to-ear with the Riley news as the league has missed out on the CFP every year since 2016 and has faded in relevance. Oregon faces Utah in the Pac-12 title game on Friday from Las Vegas with the Utes at -2.5, but the winner will not be playoff-bound. It will face a Big Ten team TBA in the Rose Bowl.
The Sooners lost at Oklahoma State on Saturday night, 37-33, to miss out on a potential rematch in the Big 12 title game. Riley was asked about potentially leaving for LSU after and said: "I'm not going to be the next head coach at LSU. Next question." Well, he wasn't lying. Too bad no one asked him about USC.
Baylor's Dave Aranda was considered a front-runner at LSU but reportedly will get a big new extension from Baylor to stick around. That might leave Iowa State's Matt Campbell as the new LSU target.
As for Oklahoma's next head coach? SportsLine will offer odds on that later this week. It will be the school's first true coaching search since Bob Stoops was hired in 1999. Stoops hired Riley as his offensive coordinator in 2015 and helped choose him as his successor in 2017. Might OU try to lure Stoops out of retirement? He was on Florida's short list. Update: Stoops will serve as OU's interim coach for the team's bowl game so that's interesting.
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