Lincoln Riley to USC; Billy Napier to Florida

The future of SEC football got a dramatic shakeup today.

Following the regular-season finale for the majority of college football teams, the Florida Gators officially hired Billy Napier as the program’s next head coach. Napier was previously the head coach of Louisiana Lafayette for the last four seasons.

But the real news today involves a future SEC member, as the Oklahoma Sooners are losing head coach Lincoln Riley to the USC Trojans. On3 broke the news first.

While Oklahoma won’t officially be an SEC school for potentially several years, there’s no question Riley is a top-five college football head coach and would have had the Sooners competing for the SEC Championship right away. Depending on how much longer Nick Saban coaches, Riley could have eventually become the league’s best coach.

Riley was also a prime target for the LSU Tigers, who are also reportedly considering Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Stoops. It will be interesting to watch LSU’s coaching search in the coming days and weeks now the Riley is officially off the table.

And of course, Mark’s brother, Bob Stoops, was a long-time head coach of the Sooners. So it’s possible he pushes for Mark to be the next head man at Oklahoma. I would expect to hear of Oklahoma showing some level of interest in Stoops, though it’s obviously too early to tell how realistic of a candidate he’ll be. If nothing else, this will help ensure he signs a mega-extension with UK in the near future.

As for Napier, he was viewed as one of, if not the top head-coaching candidate in terms of coaches at non-Power 5 schools who were set to land a bigger school like Florida. He went 39–12 as the Ragin Cajuns’ coach, including a 32-5 mark over the last three seasons.

Buckle up folks, as the college football coaching carousel is just getting started.