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Oklahoma HC Brent Venables on the Red River Shootout: "I don't see how the conference affiliation will make a big difference"

Joe Cookby:Joe Cook•07/16/24•

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NCAA Football:
Brett Patzke-USA TODAY Sports

DALLAS — Come October 12, the Red River Shootout will be a SEC rivalry. But aside from the change in conference affiliation, will anything about the annual battle between Texas and Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl change?

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Sooners head coach Brent Venables, who took to the stage Tuesday at SEC Media Days, thinks it will look a lot like it did when it was a battle between Big 12 schools or when it was a matchup featuring a Southwest Conference team and a Big 8 institution.

“I don’t,” Venables said. “It’s as deep-seated and hate-filled and emotional of a rivalry as there is in all of college football. So I don’t see how the conference affiliation will make a big difference.”

During the Big 12 era, the winner of the Red River Shootout went on to win the league in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020. That had to do both with the success of both programs, mostly Oklahoma as far as winning Big 12 titles, but also the winner of the game earning the inside track to the conference championship game by taking the lead in the Big 12 South.

Things changed in 2017, when the Big 12 reinstated the conference championship game. Even so, the Red River Shootout proved to often be the biggest hurdle either participant had to overcome on the way to Arlington.

That’s changing in the SEC. After Texas plays Oklahoma, the Longhorns will face Georgia, Vanderbilt, Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Texas A&M. OU will face South Carolina, Ole Miss, Maine, Missouri, Alabama, and LSU. Aside from the battle with the Black Bears, that’s quite the challenging list of contests. Juxtapose that with the one or two major games OU and UT would see after the Red River Shootout, and it’s a different experience.

“What I would say is that, you know, that’s one of many games that you’re going to have to find a way to grind it out,” Venables said. “If you think that one is emotionally taxing, you’re going to go into a lot of venues that the pageantry is going to be real, the stadiums are going to be completely full and a lot of people are going to hate your guts for three hours or so.”

Even with the new additions to the schedule, and the new challenging contests on it, that’s not going to change anything about what happens on the second Saturday of October in Dallas.

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“So I don’t see it diminishing that series and the emotion and the pageantry, the intensity of it whatsoever,” Venables said.

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