Record Scratch, Freeze Frame: Why OU isn't SEC Ready (and Texas is)

FADE IN, EXT – THE COTTON BOWL: TEXAS/OU 2024, TWO SECONDS LEFT ON THE SCOREBOARD WHICH READS 34-3. THE SOONER SIDE OF THE STADIUM IS EMPTY. THE OKLAHOMA OFFENSE IS ATTEMPTING TO SCORE A MORAL VICTORY TOUCHDOWN ON THE GAME’S LAST PLAY.

THE BALL SNAPS.

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RECORD SCRATCH/FREEZE FRAME. THE PICTURE PAUSES AND A NARRATOR BEGINS A VOICEOVER (the voice work is done by either Mike Gundy, Peter Gardere, or AI Toby Keith – Rest in Peace).

Narrator: There they are, the Oklahoma Sooners, one of the proudest programs in the history of college football, and they’re down 34-3 in the fourth quarter of the first SEC edition of the Red River Shootout.

They’re cooked to a crisp like one of Lincoln Riley’s Easter Sunday briskets. And yep, that’s a true freshman quarterback in Michael Hawkins Jr. trying to put six points on the board to clean the wound just a little bit. No, a touchdown here still won’t cover the spread. And this is the second Red River in three years that the once-great Sooners have failed to even get in the end zone against their arch nemesis in burnt orange and white. You’re probably wondering, how did we get here?

Well then, what’s the last thing you remember? Oh wow, okay, then I know all your questions: Is that a number one by Texas on the scoreboard? Where’s Riley? Caleb Williams? Yes, gone and gone. Let’s rewind the tape back a few years, and I’ll show you why these Sooners got caught with their pants down headed to the new conference while the Longhorns are SEC ready.

No, we don’t need to wait for the last play; I’ll spoil it for you… they don’t score here. Alright then, roll the tape back to Red River in 2021. The Sooner fans are out on the field after coming back against Texas when they were down 28-7. Texas doesn’t look remotely ready for the SEC, and Oklahoma is undefeated with a generational quarterback. Here’s where things start to go wrong for the old Sooners.

What happens from this point forward? Why isn’t Oklahoma SEC ready, and Texas is?

Overcorrection Hires and Correct Hires

After Red River in 2021, things got worse for Texas and a little weird in Norman. But, Texas stayed the course and kept building under Steve Sarkisian, who the Texas brass never threw under the bus. While Oklahoma was betrayed by the coach they were already finalizing statue plans for. And the tremors of the December 2021 coaching carousel have never stopped reverberating in Norman.

When Riley left, Oklahoma was shaken to its core. The Sooners thought they had another Golden Boy in Riley, who had two Heisman winners, just ten losses in five seasons, and Williams at QB with the SEC on the horizon. But Riley shocked the Sooners when he said he didn’t want OU DNA injected into his veins and left, taking Williams with him.

In one of my first-ever articles, I wrote about how coaching hires were usually just an exercise in overcorrecting, much like how the dating world plays out. Texas has certainly done it—Tom Herman was an overcorrection from Charlie Strong, who was a repudiation of late stage Mack Brown. Oklahoma had been lucky enough to avoid such problems for the most part because they weren’t afraid to hire young and from within their own ecosystem.

With Oklahoma’s history, Williams, and the impending move to the SEC, they should have looked far and wide for a coach to replace Riley like they once did with Bob Stoops. Imagine Dan Lanning in Norman going into the SEC? That would have been a scary sight. But they were paranoid from Riley’s two-timing, and they looked only within their own inner circle.

What I wrote about Brent Venables two years ago still applies today: Instead of looking far and wide, the Sooners brass, led by Athletic Director Joe Castiglione and Coach Emeritus Bob Stoops, seemed determined not to let Riley’s treason happen again, and they turned to a familiar face in Brent Venables. Oklahoma made Wilkinson, Switzer, Stoops, Riley, and now Venables all first-time head coaches. But, with Venables, it seemed as if they were making a hire based on an overcorrection to what had just happened to them. They had been spurned by someone they thought they knew, so they bunkered down and turned even further inward toward a 51-year-old first-time head coach who was inheriting a program stripped of its production and parts.

Meanwhile, at Texas, the hire of Sarkisian was finally not an overcorrection to the past failures. It’s not like they didn’t try; they tried to overcorrect from Herman in hiring the coach Herman was desperate to impersonate in Urban Meyer. But it not working out made the Longhorn brass do some self-discovery before looking outward. Sark wasn’t a first-time head coach, but he has failed before, in the same way many great coaches failed in their first stops. Those failures, both professionally and personally, rebuilt Sark into the coach he is today. Sark was brought in because of his pedigree and his traits: he’s an elite offensive mind in a game and conference that is increasingly bending that direction, unlike Riley, who seemed intimidated by the SEC, and Venables, who was SEC adjacent at Clemson under Dabo Swinney.

Sarkisian knew the Longhorns and Sooners’ new conference intimately from his time at Alabama. And that’s what is even more important—he’s from two giant and successful coaching trees in Pete Carroll and Nick Saban. It’s unfair not to point out that Sarkisian was hired a year before Venables, and although the cupboard was left bare by Herman, Sark didn’t have to deal with a pantry that had been raided by the previous owners in the way Venables did.

But what is fair to say is that with the SEC move on the horizon and with a hire to make, Texas made the creative hire outside of their ecosystem, while Oklahoma played it safe.

Complementary Football

Sarkisian stressed complementary football from the second he stepped foot on campus in Austin, and his staff has had remarkable continuity. In year one, that philosophy actually came at a cost for Texas as they consistently blew leads due to a porous defense, when a little bit of a Riley mindset that hung one side of the ball out to dry might have paid dividends in the form of cheap wins.

But that insistence on complementary football has allowed Sark to build a total football team and, in turn, become a “total football coach,” as our Eric Nahlin wrote today. A lot of that comes from continuity, leading to success on the field in scheme and on the recruiting trail. In year four, Sarkisian still has six of the original assistants he brought with him to Austin. Meanwhile, Venables’ staff is a hodgepodge of former Stoops and Riley disciples with some Oklahoma legends sprinkled in. Oklahoma is still trying to run their old offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby’s veer and shoot offense, but with a new coordinator in Seth Littrell who is from more of the Mike Leach Air Raid tree.

There’s nothing resembling complementary football underscoring Venables’ program or roster, and viewing both teams through that lens shows how Saturday went so poorly for Oklahoma so quickly. Oklahoma’s defense gave the Sooner offense a short field multiple times, but the offense couldn’t take advantage behind a strange game plan that was entrusted to a true freshman quarterback, behind a new offensive line, and a rash of wide receiver injuries. The injuries aren’t Venables’ fault, but he’s to blame for the others.

Meanwhile, complementary football is what blew the game open for the Longhorns.

First, the defense picked the offense up when it wasn’t clicking behind a rusty Quinn Ewers. But later, an Anthony Hill Jr. forced fumble led to a Quintrevion Wisner touchdown run one play later, and the game went from a rock fight to a blowout before halftime. Venables has recruited excellent players on the defensive side of the ball that will give Texas’ offense some trouble for a while, but if the offense remains inept, it will all be for naught. People forget, but even Strong had an elite defense for 1.5 seasons at Texas.

Quarterback

As Texas knows better than anyone, this is where it all falls apart. Missing on quarterbacks exposes the cracks in a program like you’re looking at them through a powerful microscope. The one time Texas did have a quarterback in between the eras of Colt McCoy and Ewers, it was Sam Ehlinger, and he covered up a lot of flaws in Herman’s program, scheme, and roster building.

Now, Texas has the best quarterback room in the country with Ewers and Arch Manning. While Oklahoma under Venables has severely mismanaged its quarterback situation to the point of crisis. First, they weren’t able to keep Williams, though they should have searched under every couch pillow in every trailer in the Sooner State for NIL funds to keep the future Chicago Bears quarterback, that’s just college football these days and Williams joined Riley in Los Angeles.

What’s more damning is that they allowed Dillon Gabriel to hit the portal for nothing because they were afraid of Jackson Arnold transferring. But then, in just four games, they showed Arnold the bench for doing what freshman quarterbacks do: turn the ball over. Now they’ve handed the keys to a true freshman in Hawkins, who has five injured wide receivers who were all contributors to their respective teams last year. It’s all but guaranteed Arnold will transfer, so the Sooners have to ride it out with Hawkins, who will face the toughest remaining schedule in college football.

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Narrator: Red River might oftentimes be a matchup of teams in completely different places from a program standpoint, but the game still serves as a litmus test for the two programs, their health and where they’re headed. If it wasn’t already clear, it’s even more obvious after Saturday where Texas is going under Sarkisian. The Longhorns have yet another bar to clear on Saturday with Georgia and Kirby Smart racing into Austin alongside Ferrari and Red Bull.

As for Oklahoma? I think back to when Riley left Oklahoma for USC, he seemed shook by the Sooners failures in the playoffs and he had clearly grown frustrated with his own roster in Norman. He mentioned in an interview how in all of his trips to the playoffs, the Sooners never had better than the third most talented roster of the four participating teams. In Riley’s mind, his old program wasn’t ready for the playoffs, nor were they SEC ready.

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They still aren’t today and they won’t be any time soon.