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Early riser: Lincoln Riley helps revive Oklahoma offense

MULESHOE, Texas — At times during the installation that spring, David Wood couldn’t help but shake his head. Five years earlier, Lincoln Riley had quarterbacked Muleshoe High School. And now here he was, so young but so self-assured, teaching his former coaches the intricacies of coach Mike Leach’s “Air Raid” offense.

“We really thought he knew exactly what he was talking about,” says Wood, then and now Muleshoe High’s head coach. “We were just coaching him a few years earlier. But he always had something special about him.”

Serious college football fans have gotten acquainted with Riley this season, his first at Oklahoma, as he has led an offensive resurgence that was a catalyst for the Sooners' surprising ascent to the College Football Playoff.