Sour Grapes
Oklahoma senator proposes bill to rename last three inches of desolate panhandle highway the “Lincoln Riley Highway”
It’s been over two weeks since Lincoln Riley flew the Norman coop. The Panhandle Judas is already hard at work at USC. The Sooners have moved on, hiring longtime Clemson DC Brent Venables as their new head coach. Bygones are bygones and time heals all wounds, at least so they say, but the good, hearty folk of Oklahoma aren’t over it quite yet. Not even close. Just take a gander at this new bill proposed by Oklahoma state senator Bill Coleman, which, if passed, would rename the last three inches of one of Oklahoma’s most barren strips of highway the “Lincoln Riley Highway.”
You think you know what it mean to be jilted? You think you know what it means to have loved and lost? You know nothing. This is a level of petty rarely seen in American politics, and that’s saying a whole lot. This is an elected official and grown man trying to use taxpayer dollars to rename a quarter foot of tarmac to get back at a college football coach who hurt his feelings. The American government fails its citizens in a million ways every single day, but this? This is a new one.
David Zaitz
“While we are all free to pursue employment elsewhere,” Coleman writes in his proposal, “there is a level of professionalism that is expected to be adhered to.”
Professionalism you say? Such as using the influence and resources of your state’s highest lawmaking office to exact revenge on a college football coach? Is that the kind of professionalism you’re talking about, Bill?
If you haven’t noticed, this country has some real problems that could use some real attention right now. It should be all hands on deck, from town to county to state to federal. But what do we know, we’re just a sports blog. Go ahead, Oklahoma. Do what you want. Rename your biggest, nastiest swamp “Lincoln Riley’s Mom.” We don’t care and we promise that ol’ three-inch Lincoln doesn’t either.