Choosing both Littrell and Finley could keep Sooners away from Lebby's biggest failures

Oklahoma offensive analyst Seth Littrell during spring practice, Tuesday, March 21, 2023, in Norman, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Everybody has the story so it must be true.

Brent Venables has made his choice to replace Jeff Lebby as Sooner offensive coordinator and an official announcement could come as soon as today.

The choice, though, is plural, rather than singular, making it more interesting than if it wasn’t

If that’s confusing, here it is: Seth Littrell and Joe Jon Finley will become co-offensive coordinators, with Littrell presumed the greater of two equals and, thereby, the play-caller.

It would have been hard for Venables to have kept it in the family any more than this.

Littrell was the senior fullback on Oklahoma’s 2000 national championship team and Finley was a four-year Sooner tight end, finishing in 2007.

Both were already on staff, too, Littrell as an offensive analyst following a seven-year stint as North Texas head coach and Finley as a third-year assistant, in charge of tight ends.

Perhaps we should have seen this coming. 

Not only were their names on every list of possible hires, but the arrangement is familiar, too.

When Venables arrived at OU the first time, leaving Kansas State to join Bob Stoops’ first staff, he not only did it alongside Mike Stoops, who was moving from Manhattan to Norman, too, he did it to become co-defensive coordinator, Robin to Mike Stoops’ Batman.

Perhaps Venables was nostalgic for another similar arrangement, perhaps he liked the idea of taking one opening and turning it into two internal promotions or maybe Finley’s just too promising a coach to risk losing even as Littrell's Lebby’s real successor.

Any of those could be true.

Here’s hoping his thinking went deeper than that and here’s why.

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