It truly has been a wild ride. All those years ago it was received as a wonderful idea to merge all of a league which has been a stable fixture in the regional collegiate athletic landscape since its original founding in 1907 with the upper tier of one that had been existing on borrowed time for well over a decade. In early 1994 when the Big 8 Conference invited the four upper tier schools of the dying Southwest Conference to become members of a new superconference to be known as the Big 12, it was heralded as a win-win agreement for all involved. It was projected that the new two-division conference would garner some 15% of the national TV sports media market. How could anyone not envy membership in such a league? It was an especially good arrangement for Oklahoma in that the program’s traditional rivalries were not entirely disrupted. The Sooners would continue to meet Texas and Oklahoma State as divisional opponents and Nebraska home and home two out of every four years. For the first fifteen years of its existence all appeared to go well. Football of course was the main big money sport and for reasons involving big money schools began to be lured away by the prospect of greener pastures. Indeed, in 2011 Colorado left for the PAC 12, Nebraska left for the Big 10 and Texas A&M and Missouri left for the SEC around the same time. Given the vacancies those departures created, a school outside the region, West Virginia, subsequently applied and was accepted as a Big 12 member as was former SWC member Texas Christian in Fort Worth. Fast forward to July 2021 and opportunity for two heavyweights came knocking. As a part of conference realignment, Oklahoma and Texas agreed to join the Southeastern Conference in 2025, a deal that at the time seemingly came out of the clear blue. In September 2021 the Big 12 voted to add four additional schools which came aboard this year, those being Central Florida, Cincinnati, Houston and Brigham Young bring the total number of members back to twelve. Earlier this year, Oklahoma and Texas reached an agreement to depart the Big 12 for the SEC in 2024. The Sooners are therefore on their final Big 12 campaign. Prior to the 2023 season, OU has won 14 Big 12 Championships and until a rainy and miserable day in Lawrence, KS was on track to win #15. After coming up short to the Jayhawks, the 2023 Big 12 crown became a bit more elusive.
It has been almost two years since there was anything posted on this blog about Oklahoma Football. That was the occasion of the hiring of Brent Venables as the 23rd head coach of the Sooners. That was after the 22nd head coach left Norman seeking a better deal in the greener pastures of the University of Southern California. Nearly two years later both programs, OU and USC, appear to be on vastly different trajectories. In the second half of the 2023 season which is OU’s final one in the Big 12, second year head Coach Venables has successfully demonstrated he was the right man for the job. Many of his players have made great improvements under his tutelage and his honesty and forthrightness in telling his fanbase the Team is not where they need to be to compete is much appreciated by the realists among them. His team was undefeated through Week 8 of the season despite the honesty of his assertions. The Sooners’ special teams unit continues to struggle. OU is lucky to have an offense led by Dillon Gabriel, a Heisman Trophy-caliber quarterback, who can rise to the occasion supported by a stout and stingy defense that held the vaunted Texas Longhorn offense on their 1-yardline for four consecutive downs! Although their latest performance indicates they still have much work to do to become a legitimate national championship contender, defense of such quality has been missing-in-action in Norman in Coach Venables’ absence. Venables’ Defense at Clemson was a deciding factor in their 2016 and 2018 National Championship seasons. It is so very appropriate that OU’s defense has emerged to preserve victory more often than not as 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of when the Sooners had three Selmon Brothers making a statement for an undefeated Oklahoma’s Defense. Lucious, Lee Roy and Dewey Selmon carved out their own special place in Oklahoma Football’s storied history.
Regardless of what may or may not happen for the rest of this second season of Coach Venables’ tenure and final season in the Big 12, OU Team #129 has already racked up more wins than Team #128. Indeed, The Sooners posted their first losing record in 2022 since losing seven games in 1998, the last season of the late head coach John Blake.
Although it may be fun and healthy as part of a well-rounded college experience, collegiate athletics in America represents for many a classic example of mismanaged priorities. The athletic department at many colleges and universities commands a disproportionally large part of the institution’s budget. Football, being the economic engine that pulls the rest of the athletic train so to speak, is not only a source of state pride as well as national and international recognition, it is also a huge source of revenue for the the school. It would not be unreasonable for any outside observer to dismiss college football as a child’s game run amok given that several head coaches at the NCAA Division 1 level are paid salaries ten to twelve times higher than the next highest tenured professor on their respective campus. Also, with the introduction of the Name Image Likeness rule, the veneer of the “student athlete” has for all intents and purposes vanished. College football has become a mainstay of the big business of promoting not just the institution and its standout players but the community and state in which the program is located. Collegiate football has evolved over several decades as the proving ground for the National Football League. American football is unique in that regard as it has no official minor league.
Given the 2023 Sooners suffered their first loss on the season to Kansas and are no longer undefeated, a 15th Big 12 title is in question and any talk of national championship contention will likely have to wait until OU’s move to the SEC next season. Being an OU alumni and having been a season ticket holder since 1999, Yours Truly loyally follows the Sooners. It is much easier to do when such a football dynasty is winning as I suffered through and survived much indignity during the down years. As a native and long time resident of the Sooner State, Oklahoma Sooners football is one of the dwindling number of bright spots of which we non-conservative locals have to be genuinely proud. I reckon it counts as a straight up admission as to how far my beloved home state has declined when we have to count on the emotional boost netted from watching, following and critiquing the quality of coaching of and performance by teenage and early 20-something college athletes playing a child’s game run amok and being there to shout “BOOMER SOONER” in their support win or lose. Such is how so many of us live and die along this, the Mother Road’s most Conservative stretch.
Thanks for reading.
