For Venables, it's Day 1 all over again as Sooners attempt getting bowl eligible in Columbia
Author’s note: Once again, the pregame column I write each week that also runs in Saturday’s Norman Transcript, is out early here at Oklahoma Columnist. Please understand the “today” references mean Saturday rather than Friday.
Also, as a teaser, I’m going to take a deeper dive into Sooner women’s basketball following today’s — “today” being Friday — contest against Virginia, a real live ACC opponent and it’s still just November. And, given that OU kicks off at Missouri at 6:45 p.m. Saturday, I’ll be posting my game column from it very late Saturday night.
Enjoy …
This is where it begins.
At once, those words are both apropos to the moment and an echo from so many other moments since Brent Venables became Sooner football coach on Dec. 5, 2021.
It was apropos that day, the first day of his first round of spring drills and his first game, a 45-13 victory over UTEP.
Then, because that season went south so quickly after a 3-0 start, it all began again opening day of last season, a 73-0 victory over Arkansas State, a triumph that helped lead to a 10-win season that not only won him a quick new contract, but one with an insane buyout clause that would cost Oklahoma dang near $45 million were it to send him packing following three more losses this season.
If opening day this season wasn’t another start-all-over moment for Venables and the program, Sept. 21 certainly was, OU’s very first SEC game, a 25-15 loss to head coach Josh Heupel and Tennessee.
Then there’s today, yet another beginning given all that’s come before.
That’s because victory at Missouri (6-2, 2-2 SEC), the No. 24 squad in the original College Football Playoff rankings, out this week, would create no worse than a six-win season for OU (5-4, 1-4), which is the ticket to a bowl game and three to four more weeks of practice.
Win today, and even if OU were ready to part with nearly half-a-hundred million, it would be hard to jettison Venables prior to a bowl game and really hard to do it afterward, making it very unlikely to happen.
Yet, lose today, to the Tide and the Tigers, too, and, good God would it be expensive but … well, no less than old Transcript sports editor, now Tulsa World columnist, the great Berry Tramel, put it this way:
“Lose to Missouri, and lose out to Bama and LSU, and there’s no certainty that Venables will be retained,” he wrote. “OU can hardly afford to fire him, but OU also can hardly afford to keep him. Not in this new free agency age, where rebuilding is year to year for most every program.”
And even were OU to keep Venables after three more losses and no more practice, it still begins today.
Topping Alabama or LSU being so unlikely, today’s probably the only chance to earn the extended time a bowl game provides.
Get the win, get the bowl game and not only have you shown growth at the end of the season, but you’ve built momentum heading into the spring and next season, you’re not starting at zero again and you can tell yourself, and players can tell themselves, the program’s a whole lot closer to reaching the where it needs to be, which, at minimum, is becoming a competitive SEC team.
Go splat and you’ve got nothing to look forward to, you’re left to wallow in your failure while working like the dickens not to let it become a recruiting failure, too, not to mention your fans will have nothing to do for a good long while.
Sure, they could turn to basketball season, but they probably won’t because it’s not their habit, the last time they had football taken from them so early being 1998, also the last time the program chimed in with only five wins.
Performance, victories and competing for championships will always be better than mere good vibes, but try exiting the season with none of those things and no vibes.
The worst.
Venables, predictably, claims to have given no consideration toward what victory today might earn him and his program tomorrow.
“I haven’t spent any time on the by-product,” he said. “Focusing on trying to go 1-0 this week and finishing much better than what we started this season.”
He probably hasn’t.
But he needs that by-product. He needs it for himself and his program needs it, too, because it’s hard to get anywhere near the top when you’re starting over at rock bottom.