MULESHOE, Texas — As Debbie Conner stood at the chalkboard during her Muleshoe High School honors math courses, one student always sat in the back, rarely taking notes.
It would have been easy to mistake him for a goof-off if not for the occasional question as Conner was explaining some difficult formula.
“Couldn’t you just do it this way?” he would ask before detailing an alternate route to the right answer.
Other students groaned.
“Shut up! We don’t understand what you’re saying!”
Thirteen years later, Lincoln Riley is using that uncanny brain power in a different realm as Oklahoma’s new offensive coordinator, hired by Bob Stoops in January to coach quarterbacks and reinvigorate a Sooner offense that had grown stagnant.