Lincoln Log: Other highlights from Riley's weekly press conference

Senior Moment ... A Week to Heal ... Mask Update ... Big 12 Tiebreakers

Highlights from Lincoln Riley’s weekly press conference:

Senior Moment

If Saturday’s home game with Baylor does get played, it’ll be the last home game for 16 OU seniors — one of the smallest classes in recent history.

Sadly, there will be no senior day ceremonies to commemorate their careers. No walking out to midfield with family, no framed jersey, no warm ovation from Sooner Nation.

Not yet, anyway.

“After talking to them and some of the kids and families and all that, we’ve decided we’re going to cancel the Senior Day festivities,” Lincoln Riley said Tuesday. “I think for a few reasons. Obviously, there are a million reasons this year. Not being able to have families on the field. Not all families even being able to travel and be there for it. Not being able to do it in front of a full stadium, which, that’s not the most important for me, but I think that is a factor.

“And I think that with all that’s going on right now, I just don’t know that we could do it the way we want to do it.”

Riley said the discussion for how to send off this year’s senior class has been ongoing for several weeks. He thinks a solution may lie later in the calendar.

“We’ll still have our — here in the spring, hopefully at some point, if this thing has cleared up a little bit — we’ll be able to have a kind of senior night that we had with our guys and the staff that we did last year for the first time and everybody loved. We are definitely in plans, whether it’s a spring game or another home game, at some point in the future, going to come back and honor these guys and their families who have played their last game. We’re definitely not sweeping it under the rug. We want it to happen. But we want it to happen where we can do it the right way. We’ve communicated that to our guys who that could potentially affect and to their families as well.”

Saturday is scheduled to be the home finale for Tre Brown, Davion Curtis, Finely Felix, Theo Howard, Stephen Johnson, Spencer Jones, Caleb Kelly, Bryan Mead, Obi Obialo, Tanner Schafer, Josh Schenck, Rhamondre Stevenson, LaRon Stokes, Erik Swenson, Chanse Sylvie and Jon-Michael Terry.

However, every one of those players can come back next year if he wants, per the NCAA’s decision this year to add a year of eligibility. So maybe they’ll get a proper send-off in 2021.

LaRon Stokes :: Ty Russell / OU Athletics

A Week to Heal

While nobody wants a complete shutdown, there were a handful of Sooners who benefited last week from not having a game or who weren’t set back by missing practice.

“I think there's several,” Riley said. “We’ve had a few guys that have played just a whole bunch of snaps this year. And then on top of it, with the limited roster, there’s more snaps in practice, more snaps in games. We’ve got some guys that have got a pretty good load on ‘em, so I think we’re a pretty fresh football team. That’s one of the positives of having five days where you shut down is I do think we’re pretty fast and fresh and moving around pretty good.”

Riley offered up defensive tackle LaRon Stokes as an example of someone who might have benefited the most from a week off. Stokes hasn’t played since the TCU game on Oct. 24.

“I don’t know that he's gonna be ready to play yet (against Baylor),” Riley said. “Feel like we’ve been close to getting him back. But he’s a guy that has made some progress that I think is getting closer, so I think he’s a guy certainly that probably benefited from having to move the game back.”

Mask Update

While his coaching staff and the OU support staff has been hit with COVID-19, Riley has avoided a positive test. One reason, he said, is because he wears a mask except when he’s not eating or sleeping. He said he even wears one at home.

“Just about all the time. I do at times at home,” he said. “We try to try to be outside a little bit more, especially when I’m around the girls. My family, like a lot of our coaches’ families, has been committed to wearing them in their normal daily lives as well. So there’s certainly a lot more hours in a day where I have it on that when I don’t.”

Big 12 Tiebreakers

Riley said Big 12 leaders did a nice job of laying out the league’s tie breaking procedures before the season, but the addendum written in that requires teams to play a certain number of games to qualify for the championship game on Dec. 19 is one that could leave the five-time defending champ on the outside looking in.

Big 12 teams are scheduled to play 9 games every year. Including any cancellations, if the rest of the league averages at least 8.5 conference games, then the teams playing in AT&T Stadium will need to play a minimum of 8 games to be within one of the league average (rounded up).

OU is at 7 right now, and with the way the pandemic has spiked in recent days, it’s possible that both the Sooners’ games against Baylor and West Virginia could get canceled. That could leave the Sooners at home on Dec. 19, with Iowa State playing Oklahoma State for the title — if Oklahoma State gets in its final two games at TCU and at Baylor, that is.

“I think it’s us being able to play at least one of the next two weeks and having a chance to win is the key,” Riley said, “and if we’re not, then it’ll be detrimental to (Oklahoma’s) Big 12 title chances.

“But if that’s the right thing to do, then we — as much as it would hit you in the gut — we wouldn’t hesitate to do that. Hopefully we’re not in that (situation and) we can control it, and we’re in a place to play them both. Because we absolutely want to play ‘em both.”

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