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At 26, Lincoln Riley transformed ECU’s offense. At 33, he’s head coach at Oklahoma

Like a lot of 26-year-olds, Lincoln Riley was looking for a job in the winter of 2010.

Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach had been fired due to a player mistreatment scandal, and his staff was let go, too. For Riley, who had spent eight years at Texas Tech moving up the ladder from walk-on quarterback to student assistant to graduate assistant to wide receivers coach, that meant leaving West Texas for the first time in his life.

[Lincoln Riley, 33, takes over as Oklahoma's football coach]

[Former East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill hired by Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma]

[Morris: Lincoln Riley makes ECU's offense go]

But first, he had a one-game audition in the Alamo Bowl on Jan.