USC head football coach Lincoln Riley opened up about some of the threatening situations he faced when he left Oklahoma to take the job with the Trojans.
He spoke about the instances with Graham Bensinger on In Depth with Graham Bensinger (5:25 mark) and revealed there were multiple break-ins at his home (h/t Scooby Axson of USA Today).
“Yeah, I had multiple … had a lot of different people trying to break into the house the days after it happened,” Riley said. “And 95 percent of the fans and people out there at Oklahoma or anybody else are great. You typically always have that percentage that at times take it too far. Obviously, this was one of those instances.”
Riley’s family hired armed security guards, and some people even got access to his nine-year-old daughter’s cellphone number.
“I didn’t care about the house. I didn’t care about anything else, just their safety,” the coach said. “We wanted the girls to be able to finish out school, because the semester was almost over. And as that stuff transpired we said, ‘No, we gotta get them the hell out of here as fast as we can.'”
Riley coached the Sooners for five seasons from 2017 through 2021.
It was a successful time for the program, which won the Big 12 every year he was at the helm except for the final one. It also went to the College Football Playoff in three of his five years, and quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray each took home a Heisman Trophy during that span.
Yet Riley departed for USC ahead of the 2022 campaign and took some players from the Sooners with him as transfers, including quarterback Caleb Williams.
Williams won the Heisman Trophy last season for the Trojans and is on the short list of realistic contenders again this year. He could also be the No. 1 overall pick of the 2024 NFL draft.
Some Oklahoma fans were surely upset that Riley left what seemed like a good situation with an annual contender to take another job, even if that job was a prestigious one at USC. The departure of Williams likely didn’t do anything to change those feelings.
However, it seems like a handful of fans took things way too far and put the coach and his family in dangerous situations.
Riley explained that he knows most Oklahoma fans are “great,” but he and his family needed to take certain precautions to maintain their safety in the aftermath of his decision to join the Trojans.
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