Oklahoma hired John Blake 2.0. The Sooners are awful, and stuck with Brent Venables
Midway through the second quarter of the Red River Showdown, the south side of the Cotton Bowl was Google searching “Brent Venables contract” with such frequency it caused the WiFi the crash.
In case you have not already looked it up, the first-year Oklahoma coach has a six-year, $43.5 million deal. Pretty sure that doesn’t come with a discount.
Oklahoma may need to start a GoFundMe for this buyout.
Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione was due for a dud, and he may just have hit the grand slam of hiring flops. The Sooners under Brent Venables are “as good” as the Sooners were under John Blake.
In consecutive weeks, teams from Texas embarrassed the Sooners.
Last week, TCU pulled its starters in the third quarter against Oklahoma. On Saturday, Texas waited ‘til the fourth quarter.
It’s October eighth, and the Sooners have three losses. The last time they lost three games in a season was 2014.
Saturday’s edition of the Red River Rivalry was the Big 12’s JV game of the day, playing a distant second to the showdown in Lawrence, Kansas, between the Horned Frogs and the Jayhawks.
That may be the strangest sentence ever constructed, but the 2022 edition of Texas-OU was a glorified weekend with the in-laws, only less fun.
Blame the Sooners.
Unranked Texas defeated Oklahoma 49-0 on Saturday afternoon under wonderful weather that only took five months to get here; it’s the Sooners’ third straight loss.
Brent Venables’ forte is defense, and in consecutive weeks the Sooners gave up 55 and 49 points.
This was worse than some of those infamous beat downs Bob Stoops’ Sooners handed Mack Brown’s Longhorns back in the day.
Texas is on the edge of finally playing up to its name; Oklahoma is playing like Norman High.
The Sooners played without starting quarterback, but Dillon Gabriel would not have made a difference.
On Saturday the Sooners were out-coached, out-played, out-hustled, and out of it about five minutes into the game.
The game itself looked like one of those perverse, weird attractions made famous at the adjacent State Fair of Texas just outside the Cotton Bowl itself; the Bearded Lady, or Goat Man, look better than the Sooners.
By the middle of the third quarter, the Sooners fans reluctantly started to leave the Cotton Bowl to make the dreaded drive north on I-35. It was a strangest of sights, the Sooners’ side of the Cotton Bowl emptying out well before the game was over.
“We look like a tired team. There’s probably several reasons why,” Venables said after the game.
Tired?
The Sooners look like a dead team.
“We’re having to play near perfect football and we’re not able to do that right now,” he added.
Perfect?
At this point, Sooners fans will celebrate “bad,” as opposed to the current plate of “historically awful.”
The Sooners are headed to their first losing season since 1998.
Speaking of 1998 ...
We have not seen this from the Sooners since 1998.
Saturday was the first time the Sooners have been shutout in a game since 1998.
We have not seen this from the Sooners since John Blake was the head coach, back in 1998.
Brent Venables has to be at least considered as the second coming of John Blake.
We lost Coach Blake in July, and while he had a long career in coaching he should never have been the head coach at the University of Oklahoma.
Some coaches are just better suited to be assistants.
Venables is certainly going to be granted more time to prove he’s better than this, but this start is worthy of looking long and hard at that panic button.
Oklahoma is heading to the SEC, and in the insanely impatient world of college football, the Sooners can’t afford multiple bad seasons.
The Sooners need soldout stadiums.
If a season goes south, kids won’t hesitate to check out with their eyes on that transfer portal.
According to Brett McMurphy of The Action Network, Venables is the first coach in the history of Oklahoma to start conference play at 0-3.
Oklahoma has been playing football since 1903. Its first conference season was in 1915.
The Sooners were just shutout by Texas for the first time since 1965.
This was the third worst defeat in the history of Oklahoma, which is in last place in the Big 12.
Now, for the really bad news, the Sooners still have to play Kansas.
This story was originally published October 8, 2022 at 2:17 PM.
