The Crimson & Cream will compete in the Alamo Bowl for the first time ever.

On Sunday, the No. 16 Oklahoma Sooners (10-2) officially accepted an invitation to the 2021 Valero Alamo Bowl to take on the No. 14 Oregon Ducks (10-3). This San Antonio showdown will be the eighth all-time meeting between these two iconic college football brands out of the Big 12 and Pac-12, respectively. Kick-off is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 29 at 8:15 p.m. CT on ESPN.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t that long ago when OU and UO were both ranked within the top five, nationally. Now going into the bowl season, both teams are squarely outside the top 10 with an opportunity to end their underwhelming campaigns on a relatively positive note.

Since losing Bedlam, Oklahoma has undergone arguably the most change out of any team in the FBS. Lincoln Riley is now coaching USC, along with Alex Grinch (DC) and Dennis Simmons (outside WRs). Roy Manning (CBs) is also gone, as well as strength coach Bennie Wylie. Then you’ve got the transfer situation. As of the publishing of this post, a grand total of six Sooners players (QB Spencer Rattler, WR Jadon Haselwood, WR Theo Wease, TE Austin Stogner, OL Brey Walker and WR Marcellus Crutchfield) have entered the transfer portal since the Riley’s abrupt departure. On the flipside, the Ducks could also be without head coach Mario Cristobal as he is expected to take over at Miami.

With the sky seemingly falling, a living legend came to Oklahoma’s rescue. Hall of Fame head coach Bob Stoops came out of retirement to steady the Sooners’ ship on an interim basis, and since making an emergency return to his old stomping grounds, he’s made an immediate impact as a galvanizing presence in the hearts and minds of those in and around the program.

Now, as far as it concerns the upcoming contest, this will be the first time that the Sooners have played in the Alamo Bowl. Additionally, OU owns a 6-1 head-to-head record versus Oregon all-time, with the most recent meeting being a loss to the Ducks in 2006. As most Oklahoma fans painfully recall, a wildly controversial onside kick ruling resulted in an agonizing loss in Eugene. Needless to say, this is a matchup Sooner Nation has been waiting a long time for.

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Oklahoma will make its 55th bowl appearance when it faces Oregon in the 29th annual Valero Alamo Bowl on Dec. 29 in San Antonio, Texas. OU’s bowl destination was announced Sunday afternoon.

Thoughts on the wild boom in coaching salaries and other issues as OU pursues its next head coach.

Even as the College Football Playoff takes shape, mega-contracts for college football coaches are dominating headlines in the sport.

The mere hint of coaches like James Franklin of Penn State and Michigan State’s Mel Tucker emerging as candidates for other openings have prompted their employers to fork over lucrative deals pushing nine-figure sums spread over 10-plus years. In other cases, powerhouses such as LSU are giving coaches like Brian Kelly monster compensation packages to lure them away from the Notre Dames of the world. The University of Oklahoma saw its coach, Lincoln Riley, poached away in the last few days by USC with arguably the most extravagant deal of all.

The allure of hiring a superstar coach to fix all of your program’s problems makes sense in important ways. Players pass through schools in a short window of time, but great coaches have longevity. They’re the protagonists in college football stories.

Meanwhile, the Alabama Crimson Tide are enjoying an unprecedented run of success thanks to their massive investment in Nick Saban 15 years ago. That’s the model everyone wants.

Now put yourself in the shoes of athletic directors charged with hiring new coaches. Throwing a huge contract at a big name is an easy way to get boosters off your back. The fiscal prudence of that kind of move doesn’t matter to you because you’re not answering to shareholders. Hey, if the hire doesn’t work, you’re probably getting canned anyway. A financial mess would be the next AD’s problem.

In other words, the people making these hires are getting paid to make a handful of key stakeholders happy, not to hire the best coach for the program. That environment fosters a lot of dumb money sloshing around in the coaching market, especially with gargantuan deals on the way for conference media rights.

Maybe you get a Bama situation. On the flip side, you might have rented an overpaid egomaniac for as long as it takes until you can buy him out. Not to mention, giving coaches guaranteed mountains of money doesn’t exactly inspire them to work harder.

Keep all that mind as OU athletic director Joe Castiglione vets candidates to become the next head coach of the Sooners.

A few other scattershot thoughts on the Oklahoma Sooners’ coaching search:

*Another risk of hiring bigger-than-life coaches: The worst scandals in the sport seem to happen when they’re in charge. In the last decade alone, we’ve seen sordid affairs take place at Joe Paterno’s Penn State program and Baylor under Art Briles. There’s just not enough accountability for how those programs are run when the coaches have that much power.

*Bob Stoops has done some of the most important work in his career on OU’s behalf this week. He said a lot about the events of the last week and the past season in this episode of his YouTube show:

He also didn’t say some things that stood out. Anyway, sounds like we’ll know who OU’s next head coach is by Sunday or Monday.

*Zach Barnett of Football Scoop did a good analysis of the stakes involved in this hire. He makes a solid case for what seems like the most seamless candidate in Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables. Meanwhile, Jason Kersey of The Athletic ($) argued that keeping quarterback Caleb Williams in Norman should take top priority.

I’ve given a lot of thought lately to the idea of what OU should try to accomplish now – how to shape this situation into an opportunity to strengthen the program. Frankly, the Sooners could bring in many quality coaches to stop the bleeding. Some coach out there might even be able to convince Williams and players in the transfer portal to stick around. Do that, and OU might even make it back to the top of the Big 12 in presumably its last season as a member of the conference.

But if I’m Joe Castiglione, I want to hear the candidates’ visions for building a roster to compete in the SEC when the time comes to move. As much as I wanted to see what the Sooners could do under Riley in the SEC, you could make the case that he would have faced a steep learning curve in that regard.

The deterioration of OU’s offensive line over time points to one emerging issue. The unit seemed to slip a little more each year from 2017 to now. To be fair, subpar OL play appears to be an epidemic in football, but there’s still no denying the erosion up front at OU. You can potentially blame the OL’s decline on position coach Bill Bedenbaugh, but he owns such a strong track record overall. It’s fair to ask if Riley was giving the OL coach enough roster spots and providing an adequate strength-and-conditioning program to keep the group in top form.

Without a plan to stop that slide up front, OU will struggle to handle a tougher regimen of defensive linemen every week. Whoever gets the job needs to start evaluating those issues now.

Allen has some thoughts on Lincoln Riley as well as a list of potential candidates for Oklahoma.

Let’s rewind the clock a few weeks. The Oklahoma Sooners had just seen their undefeated record spoiled in a loss to the Baylor Bears following an open date. Chatter around Lincoln Riley and the vacancy at LSU suddenly started picking up.

For the record, this was my take at the time:

I had no idea at the time if the whispers were coming from Riley’s camp or LSU. However, my point was that if Lincoln Riley wanted to make a leverage play on OU, as many were suggesting, leaking that he and his representation were flirting with another school when he was supposed to be gearing up for the stretch run of the season was a miscalculation.

In my mind – and I suspect in the mind of OU athletic director Joe Castiglione – that would be an irreparable dereliction of duty, especially given that Riley’s team still had two games left to play in contention for a conference championship and potential College Football Playoff bid. Doesn’t matter if he’s the best multi-talker alive. If he did want to stay in Norman, acquiescing to any of his demands at that point would leave OU at his mercy for as long as he saw fit.

Now that we know Riley was actually screwing around on the side with USC during the season, the same point still stands. Riley isn’t an idiot. He knew that – he didn’t care about crossing any lines because he was already gone.

And, frankly, I can’t fault Riley if he wanted to leave because he would rather coach at USC than OU. You can be an OU fan and get the appeal of the Trojans, particularly when they are offering you an astronomical sum of money to run the show.

I also wouldn’t fault him for leaving because he didn’t feel like he could get what he needed from the OU brass with the Sooners heading to the SEC in the near future. He dropped plenty of hints during his introductory press conference that he wanted more resources from OU than it was willing to give him. If that is the case, I honestly hope Castiglione was paying attention to what he wanted – Riley undoubtedly had a point about any holes in the organization.

But it doesn’t matter if Riley is right. The way he conducted himself over the last four months speaks to the fact that he got entirely too big for his britches. OU won for about 80 years before he ever set foot in Norman. Let USC get held hostage; the Sooners can find the next Lincoln Riley elsewhere.

Speaking of which…

Let’s run down some coaches of interest to this particular fan.

Needs no introduction

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Bob Stoops, Tequila salesman and TV personality

Would the winningest coach in OU history be willing to come out of retirement to right the ship for a few years and groom a new replacement? Highly unlikely.

Stoops will, however, get the chance to add one more win to his record as the interim coach for the bowl game. (This is known in the biz as a “Barry Alvarez.”)

Prodigal son

Brent Venables, Defensive Coordinator, Clemson

Stoops’ former lieutenant looks like the favorite here. He played an instrumental role in the Tigers’ ascent since he left OU after the 2011 season.

Big bonus with Venables: In Clemson, he has experience coaching at an SEC school in ACC clothes. On the downside, we don’t know much about what kind of offense he’d run. Also, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney also has kept him among the top-paid assistants in college football, and it’s not clear if Venables really wants to be the head honcho somewhere.

Assumed to be out of play

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Dave Aranda, Head Coach, Baylor

Aranda would be my top pick for the job if he is available. Recent reporting about his job status suggest he is not.

Token NFL candidate (Not Kliff Kingsbury)

Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

Joe Brady, Offensive Coordinator, Carolina Panthers

A very long shot, as the consensus seems to be Brady hates recruiting.

You probably remember Brady from the severe beating his offense at LSU administered to the Sooners in the Peach Bowl a few years ago. He won the Broyles Award as the nation’s best assistant for his work molding one of the best units in college football history.

Way off the radar

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Marcus Freeman, Defensive Coordinator, Notre Dame

Freeman’s job status just got weird with the news that Brian Kelly is leaving ND for LSU, but that may not matter if OU did come calling. Although Freeman may be a little on the green side for this gig, he has a solid reputation as an up-and-comer. Personally, I’d like to see OU become a leader in promoting minority coaching candidates as well.

One drawback: Freeman’s recruiting connections don’t seem to extend far outside the Midwest.

The upstart

Shane Beamer, Head Coach, South Carolina

Beamer apparently had many fans in the OU athletic department during his time as an assistant. By all accounts, he is well-liked in the coaching profession. He also has recruiting ties in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic that would be helpful in the SEC.

A 6-6 record in his one year with the Gamecocks represents a big step forward for a program that went 2-8 in 2020 and 4-8 in 2019. On the other hand, it’s just one year. It also seems un-Beamerly to bounce after that long on the job.

Obligatory mentions

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Matt Campbell, Head Coach, Iowa State

Albert Cesare / The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK

Luke Fickell, Head Coach, Cincinnati

The resemblance between the two is uncanny, no?

Both are great coaches with clear visions of how they want to build their programs. The talk that neither wants to work outside the Midwest, however, would turn me off.

My pick: Venables

Assuming Aranda is off the board, I’ll take Venables. Yes, it would be comfortable. That doesn’t make it wrong.

Venables would probably retain some holdovers from the existing staff, which would give OU some needed continuity to salvage (potentially) some of the existing roster and recruiting classes. Venables also has the support of former players, coaches and administrators – a big plus when it comes to greasing the wheels for any necessary improvements to the organization as a whole.

In this scenario, Venables would get ample resources to hire a well-regarded offensive coordinator. It is worth noting, though, that defenses have started biting back hard against spread offenses, as OU learned the hard way this season. Having a defensive-minded head coach could trigger a change in the program’s culture at the right moment to stay on the cutting edge of the sport.