The 2024 college football season is about a month and a half away. It’s a big one for the Oklahoma Sooners, as the football program enters year three under head coach[autotag] Brent Venables[/autotag]. OU also departs the [autotag]Big 12[/autotag] in favor of the [autotag]SEC[/autotag], which has been in the works for three years, and became official on July 1st.
Venables has been around for two and a half years, preparing the Sooners for this moment, trying to get them SEC-ready.
Oklahoma knows that the road to winning national championships will be harder in the SEC, due in large part to the league’s competitive nature. The schedule OU faces every year in the SEC will be tougher than the hardest season in the Big 12 in recent years. Venables and his staff have been working hard to rebuild the program while also getting it positioned to compete in its new era.
This brings us to the biggest X-factor for Oklahoma this season, according to ESPN. Their staff laid out the make-or-break situations for each of their Top 25 teams (ESPN+) before fall camp.
ESPN has the Sooners ranked 18th overall and 8th in the SEC heading into fall camp. They believe the schedule for the Sooners in their new conference home is the biggest X-factor in Norman this year. Here’s what Dave Wilson had to say.
That SEC schedule. Tennessee, at Auburn, Texas (in Dallas), South Carolina, at Ole Miss, at Missouri, Alabama, at LSU. Colleague Bill Connelly points out that six of those eight are in the SP+ top 16 and while there is a nonconference game with Maine mixed in there, it just keeps coming when you look down the list. The Sooners won’t be intimidated, but they’ll need the depth to survive a season full of bowl games at the same time they’ll be breaking in a new quarterback in [autotag]Jackson Arnold[/autotag]. – Wilson, ESPN
The schedule is brutal, no doubt. Oklahoma wasn’t done any favors by the folks who put it together. It’s a rude awakening to introduce OU to life in the Southeastern Conference.
First things first, the Sooners must go 4-0 in their non-conference games against Temple, Houston, Tulane, and Maine. OU will be solid favorites in each game (all at home) and they can’t slip up against Willie Fritz and the Cougars or Jon Sumrall and the Green Wave. Oklahoma needs to be 3-0 when Tennessee comes to town on September 21.
Two more games that Oklahoma needs to win are on the road against Auburn and at home against South Carolina. Those games are far from gimmes, especially against the Tigers in Jordan-Hare Stadium. But the Sooners have more talent than either of those teams. Winning these types of games will be crucial in the SEC, where you won’t have a talent advantage for multiple weeks of the season.
Splitting the home game against Tennessee and the road contest against Ole Miss would be a successful September and October if OU takes care of their business elsewhere in those two months. The [autotag]Red River Rivalry[/autotag] matchup against Texas will be another toss-up, as that game is almost always decided right at the end, regardless of how good or bad the teams are.
That leaves at Missouri, at home against Alabama, and at LSU to close the season. November could be interesting in Norman. Venables will hope that the offensive line has gelled at that point, Arnold is settled with nine more starts under his belt, and positions like defensive line, special teams, and tight end get sorted out.
Even if Oklahoma goes, say 1-2 in those three games, a strong start to the year could still result in a successful season for the Sooners. Wins in the nonconference and against Auburn and South Carolina get the Sooners to .500 already. Splitting their six other games against Tennessee, Texas, Ole Miss, Missouri, Alabama, and LSU still gets OU to 9-3, which likely puts them in the expanded 12-team [autotag]College Football Playoff[/autotag] discussion.
It’s a tall order, to be sure, and Venables and his players would say that they’re worried about what’s going on inside the walls, as opposed to outside of them.
The SEC gauntlet is why you line up and play the games in the fall. Saturdays are the lifeblood of the sport, even as it’s changed with realignment, NIL, [autotag]transfer portal[/autotag] and playoff expansion. The test for the Oklahoma football program comes in how they respond to the challenge week in and week out in the snake pit that is the SEC. It’s time to see what OU’s head coach, his staff and his players are made of.
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