How the Lincoln Riley move to USC impacts Texas’ football program

The college football world was flipped upside down on Saturday and Sunday in a multitude of fashions.

For starters, the College Football Playoff will likely feature more parody than ever before with schools like Cincinnati, Michigan, and Oklahoma State all having great opportunities to make their first appearances. However, all of their victories have been overshadowed by premiere schools finding their coach.

The day started off with Louisiana coach, Billy Napier, taking the head coaching job at Florida, but ended with the biggest splash in the coaching pond possible.

Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley, who took over for Bob Stoops as the head coach in 2017, had accumulated a 55-10 overall record and took the Sooners to three playoff appearances. Many thought Riley would follow in the footsteps of Stoops and remain as the Sooners’ head coach until his time as a college football coach was up.

That was not the case. On Sunday, it was reported that Riley had accepted the job offer to be USC’s next head coach. It was a shocking move that has sent social media and the college football world into a frenzy.

Riley had adamantly declined being connected to the LSU job opening, but was never really asked about the USC job. It was evident that money talks and possibly the future move to the SEC for Oklahoma played a major role in his decision to head to Los Angeles.

The suddenness of the move is one that media, fans, and recruits alike were not expecting at all. Multiple Oklahoma commits have tweeted that they will not be answering questions at this time, and Sooners fans are absolutely shell-shocked at the news.

The move is so big that it not only affects Oklahoma, it impacts the college football world as a whole. Here are a few ways that Lincoln Riley’s move to USC could impact Texas’ football program for the foreseeable future.

USC now has the easiest path to being "back"

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Both Texas and USC have been fighting to get back to the level of success of being atop of the college football world. The two iconic programs have long been trying to find the right replacement for the coach that led them to success in the modern era, as USC lost Pete Carrol to the NFL, and Texas and Mack Brown parted ways. With Riley going to USC, a school located in one of the most talent rich areas in the nation, along with widely being viewed as a place where people dream of living, it is fair to assume that they will rise quickly.

It also helps that the Pac-12 is the weakest of all the Power Five conferences, and with USC being down for about a decade, schools like Oregon, UCLA, and Washington all seemingly missed their window of opportunity to take ahold of the conference.

There is no doubt that Riley will have an easy time recruiting young athletes to sunny Los Angeles if he was able to convince kids to move to Norman, but it also makes it so USC has the quicker path to being back than Texas does. The Longhorns are in the beginning stages of what looks like a rebuild of a roster that miserably underwhelmed this season. It is not to say that Texas doesn’t have the right pieces in place, but being an elite coach in Los Angeles in a weak conference seems to be a lot easier to manage than a school that is SEC bound.

It shows that Steve Sarkisian may truly be 'built for this'

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Steve Sarkisian took the Texas job knowing that they were poised to move to the SEC, and it seems that a major factor for Riley’s departure was that exact move. Texas badly needs someone who can not only revamp the program, but navigate them through the move to the SEC, which is proving to be a very daunting task if one of the top coaches in the nation is trying to avoid it. Whether Sarkisian is actually the right guy is to be determined, but at the moment it appears that he is mentally built for this.

Sarkisian is undoubtedly the best offensive mind in the Big 12

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This has long been the selling point for Texas. Once Sarkisian lands the players that fit his system, the Longhorns offense will be nothing short of dynamic. Xavier Worthy is the perfect example of this, as he broke the freshman record for touchdown catches in a season, and outside of Bijan Robinson was the lone bright spot for the offense.

While we don’t know exactly how long the Longhorns will remain in the Big 12 conference, the future for Texas in terms of the Red River is certainly looking to be on the up. This all comes down to recruiting and development, and if Sarkisian can get the right people on his staff and the right players, this move may have helped Texas more so than it did USC. Oklahoma has constantly been a thorn in the side of Texas, and this move by Lincoln Riley may have set them back years.

Recruiting against Oklahoma

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Oklahoma may as well have been stationed in Texas at times, as they were able to invade the state of Texas and pluck out some of the top players out of the Longhorns grasp. This moves inadvertently helps Texas in the immediate future, and the long-term future depending on who is coaching at Oklahoma. When coaches leave for another job there is usually shock, but when it happens abruptly as Riley’s departure it can hurt that school’s chances with recruits. It often reveals how bad players wanted to play for and attend a particular school, or if it was the pieces in place that factored into their decision to play there.

We have already seen multiple recruits tweet about the move, and as of now, it does not bode well for Oklahoma.

The Longhorns have an opportunity to use the relationships they have built with Oklahoma commits and sell them on familiarity, being apart of the team that brings Texas back, and the fact that Oklahoma’s program could be in shambles after the move.

Texas isn’t in the best of shape either, but they are looking much better at the moment. The Longhorns missed out on players from Texas such as Kip Lewis, Nicholas Anderson, Jason Llewellyn, Jacob Sexton, and Xavion Brice. They are also competing with Oklahoma for players like Malik Agbo and Kam Dewberry, and really could boost their class and roster for years to come. Texas is working with momentum from the success of Xavier Worthy, the one player Steve Sarkisian recruited, and the fact that they can come in make an immediate impact for a team that they know who the coach is.

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