Brent Venables officially announces dates for Oklahoma Pro Day, Spring Game
Oklahoma football will begin Spring Camp on March 22, according to head coach Brent Venables. The Sooners’ Pro Day will be held on March 30 while the Spring Game will be held on April 22.
With spring practices quickly approaching, all eyes will be on Venables entering year two as OU’s headman. He went 6-7 last season, which was the first losing season for Oklahoma in the 21st century.
In an effort to bring Oklahoma back to its place on the national stage, Venables brought in 13 different transfers out of the portal this year, good for the No. 18 class in the 2023 cycle so far.
Even more importantly, they brought in the No. 7 overall recruiting class, per the On3 Consensus, featuring three five-star recruits headlined by Five-Star Plus+ QB Jackson Arnold, who could be the Sooners’ starting QB as soon as this fall.
Paul Finebaum evaluates the state of the SEC after Texas, Oklahoma move
The SEC has established itself as one of, if not the, top conference in college football, and the additions of Oklahoma and Texas in 2024 may elevate them as the undisputed top dog across the college football landscape.
College football analyst Paul Finebaum appeared on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morningand spoke about the state of the SEC with those moves on the horizon, starting with the degree of difficulty it took to make it happen behind conference commissioner Greg Sankey.
“I think right now he’s pretty happy with where they are Greg and you talked to him so you understand that,” Finebaum said. “And I think what everyone understood watching this ordeal, and I think it was an ordeal, was how difficult this is. And yeah in today’s world, everyone wants to go ‘well in COVID we moved schedules around week to week’, well that was within a league.”
Getting prominent programs to join new, prominent conferences can’t be easy, but the SEC isn’t the only one doing so, as USC and UCLA are set to join the Big Ten in 2024 as well. Finebaum believes that the Big Ten will be making more moves in the future to add some more firepower to their conference in the future, but first, they’ll need to find a new commissioner following Kevin Warren’s departure to become the team president and chief executive officer of the Chicago Bears.
“And when you start incorporating schools into your conference with these vast agreements it makes it far more difficult. I think somebody will make a move though, and probably the Big Ten, but we don’t know who the Big Ten leader is going to be so I think once that decision is made I think we’ll watch that very closely,” Finebaum said.