The amount of unhappiness displayed by Oklahoma fans when Lincoln Riley departed the program to become USC’s football coach after the 2021 season is well-documented.
Riley, who is now in his second campaign with the Trojans, registered his third win of the 2023 season when USC dismantled Stanford, 56–10, on Saturday. While Riley’s main focus is elevating the Pac-12 program these days, he never forgets about his tenure in Norman, Okla.
However, right after his Oklahoma exit, Riley revealed that his family received threats and suspicious packages from multiple angry Sooner fans. In an interview released on Wednesday with Graham Bensinger, Riley said his top priority was to ensure his “family’s safety” during the difficult time.
“I didn’t care about the house, I didn’t care about anything else,” Riley said in the interview. “Just their safety and we thought we were going to— because we wanted the girls to be able to finish out school, just because the semester was almost over. And as that stuff transpired, we said, ‘No, we gotta get ’em the hell out of here as fast as we can.”
After USC officially named Riley the program’s next football coach on Nov. 28, 2021, he also recalled multiple break-in attempts at his home in the following days. But rather than together all Sooner fans in the same category as those who tried to burglarize his home, the 40-year-old said an overwhelming majority of the program’s fans were wonderful.
“… 95% percent of the fans and people out there at Oklahoma or anybody else are great,” Riley said. “You typically always have that percentage that, at times, take it too far. Obviously this was one of those instances.”
