The Oklahoma Sooners and the Texas Longhorns are officially members of the [autotag]Southeastern Conference[/autotag]. After nearly three years of waiting, Monday marked the official move of OU and UT from the [autotag]Big 12[/autotag] to the [autotag]SEC[/autotag].
With both football programs making the move at the same time, naturally the question is posed by fans and analysts alike: Which team is ahead of the other heading to the SEC?
Most national analysts believe Texas is ahead of Oklahoma going into 2024. After all, the Longhorns are entering Year 4 under head coach [autotag]Steve Sarkisian[/autotag], while the Sooners are only in Year 3 of the [autotag]Brent Venables[/autotag] era. Both coaches inherited programs that weren’t trending in the right direction, but Sarkisian has had a year longer to build his team. Both earned contract extensions this offseason.
Texas won the [autotag]Big 12 Conference[/autotag] and made the [autotag]College Football Playoff[/autotag] in 2023, finishing 12-2. Oklahoma went 10-3, narrowly missing the conference title game and settled for a berth in the [autotag]Valero Alamo Bowl[/autotag].
One national analyst, however, doesn’t think there’s a gap between the SEC’s newest teams. 247Sports’ Josh Pate outlined both programs’ standing going into 2024 on his show “The Late Kick With Josh Pate.”
“Oklahoma is 7-3 in the last 10 against Texas. They are 11-4 in their last 15 against Texas,” Pate said. “Oklahoma’s got a 14-4 lead in conference titles since 1996, that was in the Big 12, now they’re coming to the SEC. … The last five years, Texas has averaged a ([autotag]recruiting[/autotag]) class ranked 7.4, Oklahoma’s has averaged being ranked ninth. Not a huge gap in recruiting. What about the portal, Texas has done good there, Oklahoma has done better. So they’ve got the head-to-head, they’ve got history on their side, both recently and more long-term. Recruiting has been pretty comparable, portal has been edge Oklahoma, so where in the world is the perceived gap coming from?”
Pate went on to outline three reasons Texas is seen as a step in front of OU at this stage.
“I think three things are at play. There’s bias toward Texas that I think’s undeniable,” Pate said. “No. 2, I think there’s a lot of recency bias, and what they do is they don’t think back to the [autotag]Red River Shootout[/autotag] last year. If they did that, they’d know Oklahoma won the game. More recent than that, we saw Texas make the playoff … finally Texas made some folks look smart and they love them for it. Oklahoma won double digits games last year as well and there were a couple of one-possession losses that stood between them and maybe doing a whole lot more than just a nice solid bowl game.”
But Pate’s third and final reason is the one that stands out as the most likely reason for the gap some perceive to exist.
“For some reason, the stink of Brent Venables’ first year and his record being 6-7 still lingers much more so than Sark going 5-7 his first year,” Pate said. “That was a year prior to Brent Venables’ first year, but also, Texas has a playoff appearance … whether it should or not it just washes everyone’s memory clean. Because Oklahoma had a nice year last year .. wasn’t a playoff appearance though.”
Certainly, the standard in Norman is to make the CFP once again, especially with the expansion to 12 teams. And certainly, Texas made it to where OU wanted to be last year. But, as Josh Pate suggests, the gap between the two schools isn’t nearly as big as folks in Austin and all over the country believe it to be.
In fact, there may not be a gap at all.
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