All Sooners

Column: Ben Arbuckle Must Save Oklahoma’s Offense, but He’s Not Lincoln Riley

Brent Venables' young new OC has drawn comparisons to the Sooners' former head coach, but Arbuckle lacks key experience Riley had before stepping foot in Norman.

Ryan Chapman

New Oklahoma offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle
New Oklahoma offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle / James Snook-Imagn Images
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Brent Venables got his guy. 

The Sooners tapped up 29-year-old Ben Arbuckle to take over the offense after two years as the Washington State offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. 

Venables’ decision to hire Arbuckle, who is green, is a risky one. 

If the offense (and the program) doesn’t turn around, it’s hard to see Venables returning in 2026. 

There’s plenty to like about Arbuckle — his work ethic, his scheme, his connections back to Texas — all could combine to be a winning combination for the Sooners. 

And his age itself is no barrier to success. 

Venables also was hired to take over as Oklahoma’s defensive coordinator at 29 by Bob Stoops. Stoops himself was 29 when Bill Snyder elevated him to co-defensive coordinator at Kansas State. 

Both of those moves worked out, obviously. 

Arbuckle’s move to Oklahoma has also been compared to the arrival of another young, up-and-coming offensive mastermind from West Texas — Lincoln Riley. 

Stoops brought Riley in from East Carolina when the future OU coach was just 31. He helped overhaul OU’s offense, teaming up with Baker Mayfield to lead the Sooners to the College Football Playoff, and the rest is history. 

The comparison is comfortable, because if Arbuckle’s time in Norman goes anything like Riley’s, Venables will have hit a home run. 

But juxtaposing Arbuckle to Riley misses the mark, as it overlooks one key factor — age isn’t experience. 

To copy Arbuckle’s track record onto Riley’s at this point in his career would be a disservice to the resume Riley built before Stoops came calling. 

Arbuckle has just three years of playcalling experience at the collegiate level — one season at Western Kentucky in 2022 and two years with Washington State. 

Before that, Arbuckle was a volunteer assistant for two seasons under Zach Kittley at Houston Baptist (now Houston Christian). 

He then stepped into the high school ranks for a year before returning to work alongside Kittley as an analyst in 2021. Then Kittley was scooped up by Texas Tech and Arbuckle got his chance with the play sheet in his hands.

Not only did Riley spend more time calling the shots on his own, serving five years as East Carolina’s offensive coordinator compared to Arbuckle’s three years in charge, but Riley got an extensive and lengthy coaching education from some of the best minds in the sport. 

Mike Leach employed Riley for seven years before the future Oklahoma and USC head coach moved over to ECU. Three of those seasons were spent as a student assistant, one year was spent as a graduate assistant and then Riley coached three seasons as a wide receivers coach before he got the promotion to offensive coordinator. 

Not only did he learn from Leach, who put points on the board in the Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC, but Riley rubbed elbows with future head coaches in Sonny Dykes, Dana Holgerson and Seth Littrell while in Lubbock.

One day, a look back at that Western Kentucky coaching staff could look similar to the names that pop off the page when thumbing through an old Texas Tech media guide, but as of now Hilltoppers’ coach Tyson Helton, who hired both Kittley and Arbuckle, has yet to make the leap to the biggest stage in college football. 

Kittley himself is set to become a head coach of his own, as the Texas Tech offensive coordinator will make the step up and take over Florida Atlantic, but his story is also yet to be written. 

The competition Riley coached against was an entirely different level than what Arbuckle has seen, too. 

Today’s Big 12 isn’t what it once was, but the league Riley coached in from 2003-2009 battled the SEC for the moniker of most competitive conference in the country. 

The season Riley was elevated from graduate assistant to wide receivers coach, 2007, five Big 12 schools finished ranked in the AP Top 25, and four ended that year inside the top 10.

Five more Big 12 teams finished ranked in 2008 and OU took on Florida for the national championship, and three schools finished in the top 25 in 2009 when Texas battled Alabama for the national title. 

The competition Arbuckle was exposed to at Houston Baptist, Western Kentucky and certainly this past season at Washington State doesn’t compare. 

He did get a taste of what that level of play is like in 2023, however. 

In the Pac-12’s swan song, three Pac-12 schools ended ranked, with all three schools (Washington, Oregon and Arizona) landing in the top 11. 

The jump to the SEC will be an entirely different beast, however. Arbuckle has his work cut out for him. 

His adjustment could be seamless because, again, age itself isn’t a barrier to success in college football. 

But he doesn’t have the experience of the young coordinators who have made the leap before him, and he’ll have to show he has coaching chops beyond his years to save Venables’ job, turn the Sooners around and once again put the Oklahoma offense amongst the nation’s elite. 

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Ryan Chapman
RYAN CHAPMAN

Ryan is deputy editor at AllSooners and covers a number of sports in and around Norman and Oklahoma City. Working both as a journalist and a sports talk radio host, Ryan has covered the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the United States Men’s National Soccer Team, the Oklahoma City Energy and more. Since 2019, Ryan has simultaneously pursued a career as both a writer and a sports talk radio host, working for the Flagship for Oklahoma sports, 107.7 The Franchise, as well as AllSooners.com. Ryan serves as a contributor to The Franchise’s website, TheFranchiseOK.com, which was recognized as having the “Best Website” in 2022 by the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters. Ryan holds an associate’s degree in Journalism from Oklahoma City Community College in Oklahoma City, OK. 

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