Oklahoma fans might be surprised by our opinions on the Sooners and Brent Venables

When we finished recording The Riley Files, a 12-part podcast series on the career of Lincoln Riley, we privately worried here at Trojans Wire that the four-hour production (divided into 12 episodes) was too negative toward Riley.

If you listen to each episode — we’re going to release the 12th and final one on Saturday, Aug. 20 — you will get a mixture of positive commentary, negative commentary, and open-ended questions and uncertainties. It’s as balanced an examination as one could realistically hope for.

The idea that four hours of conversation about one man would be completely positive or completely negative is just not realistic. Of course this was going to be a complicated discussion with our featured guest, Kegan Reneau. Why? Because Lincoln Riley is a complicated person and public figure.

The one big thing everyone needs to know about this 12-part series — this four-hour dialogue with an Oklahoma football insider — is that The Riley Files were and are an attempt to understand Lincoln Riley.

What was he thinking? How was he approaching various situations? How did he respond in different contexts? That was the thrust of the series.

Explaining what a person was thinking is not the same thing as ENDORSING that person’s views or agreeing with his approach. If you have been listening to The Riley Files, you have heard ample, detailed criticisms of Lincoln Riley.

If anyone thinks this series was meant to present our guest as Lincoln Riley’s press secretary or defense attorney, that’s a bad misread of the series and its intent. This was and is a show which simply tried to get inside the mind of Lincoln Riley, for better or worse, and give football fans — especially those at USC — a better understanding of the person and the head coach.

We explained this to Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football.

We reiterate that if Oklahoma media outlets such as The Sports Animal had ever taken the time to talk to us about this series, instead of unfairly pouncing on Kegan Reneau for inexplicable reasons, they’d find that we at Trojans Wire think Brent Venables is going to succeed, and that OU did not misplay its hand in dealing with Lincoln Riley.

Here’s the video.

If The Sports Animal wants to talk to us, the door is wide open:

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The Lincoln Log: Inside Lincoln Riley's first year at USC

Story originally appeared on Trojans Wire