It’s that time of the year where hope springs eternal for college football fanbases across the country. Among those is an Oklahoma Sooners fanbase that’s hoping for a return to prominence after a 2022 season that left a lot to be desired.
2022 is in the past, and now it’s time to look ahead to the 2023 season. Over at College Sports Wire, Regional Editor Patrick Conn shared who he was buying and selling as national title contenders. Needless to say, he’s not too optimistic about the Sooners’ chances of competing for a national championship in 2023.
When [autotag]Lincoln Riley[/autotag] left for the West Coast, some thought that [autotag]Brent Venables[/autotag] was the man for the job with the Oklahoma Sooners. I wasn’t one of them. The team has reloaded in recruiting this past season but it isn’t enough for me to buy in after what I saw on the field a season ago. They have a tough schedule and their only easy win might be the opener against Arkansas State. – Conn, College Wire Regional Editor
There’s still optimism that Brent Venables can turn the Sooners into a contender. He’s only had one year in Norman to overhaul a team and a roster that had become a national title pretender in the final few years of the Lincoln Riley era.
Venables and his staff have done incredible work on the recruiting trail, setting them up with a couple of talent-rich classes in the 2022 and 2023 cycles.
The biggest obstacle to returning to title contention in the Big 12 or on the national stage is improving the defense.
The defense wasn’t good in 2022. They got better in the latter half of the season, but they have a long way to go before they prove to the college football world that they’re a legit national title contender.
Probably at this point of the Brent Venables era, few people view them that way. Of course, the same could be said for year two of the Bob Stoops era, and we saw how that all turned out.
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