There is no love lost in the world of conference realignment, especially when it comes to the Big 12 conference and the Oklahoma Sooners. And specifically, head coach Brent Venables.
Oklahoma and Red River rivals Texas famously left the Big 12 for the greener pastures of the SEC. And in just one move, the Big 12 lost its two biggest powerhouses while the SEC got even stronger.
After struggling to a 6-7 record last season, Venables had Oklahoma undefeated going into the Texas game. However, the Longhorns gave the Sooners their first loss of the season even with Heisman hopeful John Mateer returning to the lineup. And while Oklahoma still has control of their own playoff destiny, they face five teams ranked in the Top 16 in the final six games of the season.
The strength of SEC schedules is always a favored topic of SEC folks and allies. And Brent Venables echoed those sentiments at his press conference this week when he said, “This isn’t the old Big 12 days where Oklahoma destroys everybody every single week except one game of the year.”
However, Big 12 conference hit back. In fact, the league itself took to social media to tell the world that Venables and Oklahoma managed just a 10-8 record against Big 12 opposition.
In case you really wanted to go into the weeds, Venables’ conference records at Oklahoma are 3-6 in 2022 and 7-2 in 2023 in the Big 12. So far in the SEC, he holds a 3-9 conference record across a season and change.
So while Brent Venables can certainly say he has a better conference record with Oklahoma in the SEC than he does in the Big 12, that says more about the Sooners’ struggles after realignment than it does any recent dominance. Certainly, Oklahoma held a historical stranglehold over the league, at least in its 1996-2023 version. During that time period, the Sooners won 14 Big 12 title games, ten more than any other school. However, their last conference championship came in 2020.
We’ve reached the annual point in the season where the SEC dominates the rankings and conference superiority debates come fully into play. Even though the SEC fell flat in the playoff last season, this year’s rankings look a lot like any other year with SEC teams everywhere and worthy contenders from other leagues on the outside looking in.
The SEC loves nothing more than to tout their superiority in hypothetical matchups. And maybe that’s what Brent Venables was guilty of doing here, even in looking backwards. Except this time, his former conference brought their own receipts.
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