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Brian Kelly, Brent Venables, and Lincoln Riley...
CuntWaffle
Member Posts: 22,493
If you had to vote on one likely to be a guranteed success, a complete bust, and someone in between... where would you put each one of them:
Success: Riley - dominated his conference and going to a shittier one while already building a great staff and recruiting his ass off... hard to see where this one goes wrong.
Bust: Brian Kelly - His only big win I can remember was the Clemson win the other year during the regular season. Always thought he was overrated and I think he will lose 3-4 games a year in the SEC
Mediocre: Venables - no HC experience but Oklahoma sells itself. I don't see him tanking but I don't see the same type of success that Riley and Stoops held. I see quite a few head scratchers over the years.
Success: Riley - dominated his conference and going to a shittier one while already building a great staff and recruiting his ass off... hard to see where this one goes wrong.
Bust: Brian Kelly - His only big win I can remember was the Clemson win the other year during the regular season. Always thought he was overrated and I think he will lose 3-4 games a year in the SEC
Mediocre: Venables - no HC experience but Oklahoma sells itself. I don't see him tanking but I don't see the same type of success that Riley and Stoops held. I see quite a few head scratchers over the years.
Comments
Free Ed
Big 12 was the easiest power 5 with no Texas to compete with.
He's a great coach then 👍
Kelly is a shit person and wasn't impressive at a school that's #AllIn.
He jumped on LSU for a reason. Everything he's done there so far has topped the cringe meter. He's a fraud.
Don't even think he'll catch the Eddy O lightning in a bottle there. Their fans agree with me on this.
mediocre - riley - not sure what the deal is but cant seem to develop qbs but does a great job with grad transfer qbs. defense is mediocre at best and he brough grinch with him. was handed a benz in norman, will have to build a program in hollywood with massive expectations.
best - kelly - a huge fucking asshole who told a kid to go up in a scissor lift during a windstorm to tape a wednesday practice. never had a stellar qb which held him back. its a really good job with no admission requirements outside the fact you need a pulse.
"It was completely out of left field," one former player said. "We were in the mindset that it was going to be Matt Campbell, or a Matt Campbell kind of guy, and to end up 12 hours later with [Riley] as the head coach? It was wild."
Nelson and his family were already thinking about a backup plan when rumors swirled around Riley and LSU that weekend. Nelson's quarterback coach, Danny Hernandez, shot a text to Nelson's dad telling him to wait. He had a feeling USC was going to do "something sexy." When the Riley hire was announced, Nelson's dad sent Hernandez a text. "Yeah, that's definitely sexy."
"At the end of the day, [Nelson] was committed to Lincoln Riley," Hernandez said. "He checks all the boxes ... and it's really a dream come true for [Nelson] to be able to get the best of both worlds and get a chance to stay home. He's not going to be the only one."
On the USC side, the early-morning plane ride to pick up Riley in Oklahoma City became both a celebration and a war room. USC's personnel staff had been preparing for this moment for months, polishing a transition plan and accumulating information on the current roster and program on countless Excel sheets to present to a new head coach. But once he and his staff heard Riley was the hire, they were compelled to double-check everything and fine-tune the plan.
The stakes felt higher now.
And time was of the essence. Riley's priorities were assembling a staff, getting started on the recruiting trail, and evaluating and meeting with as many current USC players as possible before they went home after finals week. The recruiting itinerary resembled an ambitious but necessary travel log. First, Riley made in-home visits around Southern California before jumping on a plane that took him and the staff to Nevada, Utah, Louisiana, Florida, Maryland and Texas, all in less than a week.
Riley has refrained from talking too much about what happened before at USC, but when asked what he thought had been missing, he said, "I think the culture, the attitude around the program, there's going to be a shift. We need a locker room and a staff that everybody is on the same page, pushing in the same direction. You never get to see what the sum of all the talent is unless you can do that."
Riley is preaching to the choir that extends beyond USC. Multiple people in and around the Southern California recruiting scene noted that, at times over the past few years, it felt like USC hadn't been on the same page in its approach. For those familiar with Riley, that's no longer a concern. Anyone who has been around Riley will tell you he has a clear vision for the kind of program he wants to run, namely one where alignment is paramount and quality trumps quantity.
It's why he says that the way a facility is set up logistically is just as important as a recruiting strategy. It's why his offers at Oklahoma always carried more weight, why people around him say he's not afraid to part with anyone who doesn't share his vision. It's why, as he explained, the Trojans didn't try to flip players they weren't familiar with or try to get as many recruits as possible right away. And it's why being able to assess the current roster immediately by watching practice and the rescheduled game against Cal on Dec. 4 became a catalyst for a number of essential evaluations and conversations.
"Those players that you saw go in the portal last week from us, they weren't the best fits here," one USC source said.
It's not quite a blank slate, but it's enough of a fresh start that USC can unhook itself from the past six years of up-and-down results and anchor the program around Riley, whose premier skill lies in the fact that has been there, won that.
"I think that there's a confidence and belief that, no matter the path to get there, no matter how, I know what we have to do here to get there," Riley said.