With his retirement announcement this week, Bob Stoops—at 56 years old—is stepping away from college football and giving 33-year-old Lincoln Riley the keys to the Cadillac. After 18 years leading the Sooners, the longest tenured coach in NCAA football has decided to step down for reasons that are, for the most part, still seemingly uncertain.

Speculation has swirled that Stoops is stepping down for health reasons. While some believe that health concerns forced Stoops to retire at such a young age, most point to non-concrete health-related reasons that played a role in Stoops’s decision making. Stoops is on the record multiple times throughout his career saying that he would stop coaching in his mid-50s, not wanting to go “from the field to the graveyard.” Specifically, this position is related to Stoops’s father who suffered a fatal heart attack on the field while coaching a high school football game at 54 years old.

On the other hand, some conspiracy theorists desperately anticipate the other—probably nonexistent—shoe falling relatively soon and that Stoops is escaping NCAA violations a la Pete Carroll leaving USC for the NFL. These “truthers” point to Stoops’s history of being relatively lenient with players involved in legal troubles—most recently those of NFL rookies Joe Mixon and Dede Westbrook—revolving around the mistreatment of women While Stoops was not as stern in his judgement as he should have on a few occasions—undoubtedly his largest flaw as a coach and administrator—Stoops was lenient and often too forgiving, but never deceitful in his judgement. He never swept anything under the rug and there is no reason to believe he is jumping ship to avoid a NCAA investigation that simply is not coming.

All in all, this transition does not come as a surprise to many as the language and structure of Lincoln Riley’s three-year contract with Oklahoma pointed to him being groomed for a step into the head coach position. Riley has served as the Sooners’ Offensive Coordinator and QBs coach for the last two years and will continue to work with Heisman finalist Baker Mayfield to make another run at a Big 12 title and hopefully a national championship.

It is the timing of this transition that caught many by surprise. While Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione does not need to conduct a coaching search, it is extremely uncommon for a coaching transition to occur in June. This has many questioning why Stoops’s decision was not made following the Sooners’s blowout win over Auburn in the Sugar Bowl.

Stoops is stepping away from coaching with a 190-48 (.798) record, a national championship, and ten Big 12 championships. Stoops was also named the Walter Camp Coach of the Year twice and Big 12 Coach of the Year six times. “Big Game Bob”—who was 9-9 in bowl games—is the only coach to win the Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta Bowls as well as a national championship.

Featured Image via Flickr/frankieleon