When Lincoln Riley took over as the head coach at Oklahoma, he embraced everything about what it meant to be in charge of football program at a place like Oklahoma.

Back in July, during Riley’s first Big 12 Media Days as head coach of the Sooners, he was asked about managing all the different responsibilities that go along with his new position.

“I’ve always enjoyed the other aspects of it,” said Riley last July. “I like the X’s and O’s, but I can, worn down isn’t the right word, but I can get a little kind of wanting to move on to something else. I enjoy the business side of it, I enjoy the staff organization, the recruiting. I like kind of bouncing around doing different things.”

For Riley, this spring has produced one of his biggest challenges to date: working with the administration to put together a new spin on the spring football game.

The difference this season is that the spring game is more about recruiting than ever before. Recruits can now take official visits to college campuses before their senior seasons and that means the Sooners are looking to showcase the football program like never before during the spring game.

“That was the total goal when we started putting it all together was if our recruits came to a spring game here the last two years and then they came to a real game: what's the difference?” said Riley during a conference call earlier today. “The biggest difference is that you go from 45,000 fans in the seats in the spring games to 85,000 fans in the seats of a real game.

“So our whole goal - Some of these recruits may never come to a real game before they make these decisions.”

So when fans heard that Oklahoma was going to have a pregame concert before the scrimmage, visions of Migos, The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar and Drake started running through the heads of recruitniks who thought the Sooners would continue the recent momentum they’ve been seeing on the recruiting trail.

Heck, just have Michael Jordan come on stage draped in a Jumpman No. 6 OU jersey holding the Heisman while The Weeknd and Lamar break out into Pray for Me.

Instead, the administration decided to bring in Trace Adkins and Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.

Oh man. The reaction on Twitter was swift and vicious.

But that’s Twitter for you.

The truth is, we’re talking about a 30-minute mini-concert and an artist that was never going to please everyone.

Country, classic rock, modern rock, hip hop, Nickleback – any selection would have pissed off some segment of the fanbase.

The musical act was a small component in an overall plan to attract 80,000 people to the stadium.

“There's so many different things going on,” explained Riley. “First, coach Stoops' announcement, doing the statue dedication that morning is going to be a special moment. It's not every day that you put up a new statue around here. So it's going to be very, very cool moment and a very public setting there that I think a lot of our fans would be crazy to miss.

“Then excited about a lot of different things throughout the spring game. I'm excited about the Heisman Trophy presentation during the spring game. I mean again, one of those things you may only get to see once in your lifetime. Most programs don't ever get to see it ever.

“So that's going to be really, really cool. And we were excited about the concert aspect. That part was new for us.”

The concert was clearly the most difficult part to put together.

Truly popular acts would use this type of event for a quick million dollar payday.

I love a lot of stuff from Migos, Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd. I’m not a huge Drake guy.

The other thing to take into account: You want to have Post Malone singing about having sex with hoes and poppin’ pillies in front of your kids?

It would be awesome to have Post Malone, but I’m listening to Rockstar as I write this and laughing about how awkward that song would be in a public setting.

Everyone is focused on the concert, and I get it.

Recruitniks want OU to be a cool place. And it has become cooler thanks to CFP appearances, new facilities, Heisman trophies, Lincoln Riley and the Jordan Brand partnership.

And maybe OU learns they shouldn’t do concerts in the future if they aren’t willing to commit to more relevant artists. But the Sooners are trying something new here.

They are trying to build something.

“I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think this thing has a chance to get really big and they'll be things we take from this one that we'll continue to learn and build on,” said Riley. “You'll have more planning time in the future.

“So yeah I think this is kind of the new age spring game and all of our fans get a chance right now to come to the first one like this. This is just going to be the beginning so it's gonna be a lot of fun, it's going to be exciting and we'll be excited to find ways to improve on it and build it going into the future”

Adkins is not really all that relevant in his own genre. But he was available. And he was harmless.

“To get that many people in the stands, you've got to appeal to such a wide demographic,” said Riley. “We've had to cast a wide net. We've had to be very selective with the things we're doing and try to do different things are going to appeal to different age groups so if you're five years old or you're 85 years old or you're 35 years old, there's going to be something about that game that you're going to be really excited about and want to come see.”

Riley said it’s likely the recruits won’t even attend the concert, which was not intended to be specifically for them. It was meant to be one of many things to entice people to come to Norman April 14.

“Normally getting a concert together takes a year if not longer in advance,” said Riley. “And we had to do this within a couple of months so working with the limited timeline was definitely a factor but I thought our group did a great job and listen, our end goal with this concert was not to target recruits.”

Yep. OU introduced Trace Adkins as their musical guest. And no, I don’t want to listen to your awesome Spotify playlist you put together this month.

Fans should just treat this as spring game version 1.0. But the administration should take thorough notes.

This has now become the biggest recruiting weekend of the year. It's the lifeblood of your program. Spring game version 2.0 should have a performance that encompasses everyone, including recruits.

FYi, Adkin's 'Every Light In the House' isn’t a terrible song. I wouldn’t mind sitting in the sun on a beautiful spring day with that playing in the background.

Just let me buy a cold $8 beer Joe C.