Brent Venables is on the clock

Terrific recruiting and easier Big 12 schedule makes success the only option before arriving in SEC. If he can't get there now, it's hard to see how he ever will.

Brent Venables and the Sooners gather on the field after topping Kansas last season. The Jayhawks remain on Oklahoma’s schedule in the coming season. Three teams that beat the Sooners, however, do not. (AP Photo)

Speaking as only he can in a recent interview with the Tulsa World, the king himself, Barry Switzer, expressed doubts about Oklahoma entering the Southeastern Conference for the 2024 season.

“I know what it’ll look like,” he said. “It’ll look like we’re playing Texas every [expletive] week.”

Yes, it’s nice to know Barry Switzer still sounds like Barry Switzer.

It may not be quite as bad as the three-time national championship coach imagines.

By the time OU and Texas migrate, the SEC will have ballooned to 16 schools, and no matter how you slice it that means each conference program will dodge six other conference programs every season.

Still, there’s bound to be years it’s your turn to to run the gauntlet, seasons when Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, Florida, Auburn, LSU, Texas, even Arkansas, are all quality foes and you’ve got to play five of them, so what are you going to do then?

It may not be Texas every week. Yet, sometimes, Texas may be the easiest of the bunch.

That scenario, though looming, is macro. It’s bound to be faced and will happen soon enough. 

There’s a micro scenario brewing, too, and it’s the one placing all kinds of pressure on Brent Venables. Pressure he must thrive right through if he expects to be a long-term Sooner skipper like all the other first-initial “B” head coaches that preceded him.