Skip to main content

Lincoln Riley Got Totally Skewered Online for His Easter Brisket

In Monday’s Hot Clicks: Lincoln Riley’s nasty brisket, Stanford’s national title victory and more.

“Meat so annihilated by a Sooner I’m gonna call it Mack Brown”

Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley on the sideline

Oklahoma football coach Lincoln Riley is from a small town in the Texas Panhandle called Muleshoe. That sounds like the kind of place where everyone learns how to tack a horse and cook a big slab of meat before they’re old enough to drive. Evidently not, though.

Riley cooked a brisket for his family’s Easter dinner and decided to post a photo of it on Twitter.

Big mistake. Riley got absolutely blasted by literally thousands of people who called him out for how dry and overcooked his meat was.

For reference, here’s what the brisket looks like at Franklin Barbecue in Austin, regarded as one of Texas’s finest spots for smoked brisket.

Riley’s brisket looked, uh, not like that, and so he really heard it from the peanut gallery, especially from Texans.

The killshot came from Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor for Texas Monthly (yes, Texas Monthly has a barbecue editor), who managed to bury Riley and the entire state of Oklahoma in a single sentence.

Riley defended his cooking, asking Oklahoma strength coach Bennie Wylie to back him up.

Indeed, Wylie testified that the tacos made with the brisket were “unbelievable.”

But come on, what are you going to say when your boss asks you for your thoughts on the meal he just cooked you? 

The best of SI

Stanford captured the NCAA women’s championship after a difficult season that included several weeks spent playing on the road. ... Gonzaga and Baylor were the clear best teams in the country all season long, and now, after their early-season matchup was called off, they’ll finally meet to decide the national title. ... Five keys to tonight’s title game. ... Tales from inside the men’s bubble in Indianapolis. ... The Chiefs’ rule proposal would update an antiquated jersey number policy in need of a refresh.

Around the sports world

The Canucks’ COVID-19 outbreak sounds really, really bad. ... Angels reliever Ty Buttrey is leaving baseball, explaining that he just doesn’t have the passion for it anymore. ... Here are all the TV and radio calls of Jalen Suggs’s all-time buzzer beater. ... A Romanian soccer team joked that it had fired its coach on April Fools’ Day, and the guy was so upset that he quit for real. ... Isaiah Thomas is going to wear No. 24 with the Pelicans as a tribute to Kobe Bryant

Suffocating defense from Stanford to win the title (and Aari McDonald still almost made the shot)

You’ve seen it already, but you know you want to see it again

Shohei Ohtani is going to be the biggest star in baseball if he stays healthy

Speaking of which...

(He wasn’t seriously hurt.)

Preposterous

Yet another benefit to having fans in the stands

Some very cool reactions from a couple of winners at the U.S. Olympic wrestling trials

Excellent trolling

Not sports

Godzilla vs. Kong had the biggest box office debut since the start of the pandemic, by far. ... Doctors at a Russian hospital completed an open-heart surgery while the building was on fire. ... An Australian geologist was attacked by a very angry octopus. ... A Louisiana man was arrested at Disney World after he refused a temperature check because he had spent $15,000 on his vacation.

I will set aside my Tri-State Area bias and ignore how awful this bagel looks (it’s just a round piece of white bread) to say that the finished product looks incredible

A good song

Email dan.gartland@si.com with any feedback or follow me on Twitter for approximately one half-decent baseball joke per week. Bookmark this page to see previous editions of Hot Clicks and find the newest edition every day. By popular request I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the music featured here. Visit our Extra Mustard page throughout each day for more offbeat sports stories.