“I think by the time he got to me, he made up his mind for sure that he was going to come back,” Riley said the other day. “Not that I know how serious he ever was about leaving at that point.

“He's talked to me about being discouraged some after (he was no longer discouraged). But I think once he got to the point where he knew what he wanted to do, I think that newness excited him.”

Riley represented a return to the days of splendor. Riley's Air Raid concepts harkened back to what Mike Leach brought to Norman as part of Stoops' original staff. Stoops has talked about how the Sooners drifted further and further from those salad days.

“I know, just being there on my interview, I could feel just talking about some of the things we did (offensively), and him recognizing it from what they had done before, I could tell that excited him,” Riley said. “Just the simplest things, you could kind of feel that a little bit. Even through that spring, I felt like he was reinvigorated. I do. He had a bounce in his step and was all in completely with what we were doing. I mean completely. More than he should have been.