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Brent Venables takes shot at Big 12 in defense of tight games against SEC teams

by: Alex Byington10/14/25_AlexByington
Brent Venables
Oct 4, 2025; Norman, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables looks on during the second half against the Kent State Golden Flashes at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

Halfway through his second season in the SEC, Oklahoma‘s Brent Venables understands the league is unmatched when it comes to week-in and week-out competitiveness. It’s why the fourth-year head coach knows life won’t get any easier for the 14th-ranked Sooners moving forward.

Now, as Oklahoma looks to rebound from last weekend’s 23-6 loss to an unranked Texas in the latest Red River Rivalry game, Venables took a not-so-veiled shot at the Sooners’ former conference — the Big 12.

“This isn’t the old Big 12 days where Oklahoma destroys everybody every single week except one game of the year,” Venables said during Tuesday’s press conference according to SoonerScoop‘s George Stoia III.

This is the same Venables that went 16-10 overall and 10-8 in Big 12 play during his first two years as Oklahoma’s head coach before the Sooners formally joined the SEC in July 2024.

The Big 12 Conference’s X/Twitter account fired back not long after Venables’ comments went viral Tuesday afternoon, reminding fans about Oklahoma’s struggles in league play between 2022-23.

To be clear, Venables is likely referring to Oklahoma’s heyday throughout the first two decades of the 2000s — much of it under former head coach Bob Stoops — when he served as the the Sooners’ defensive coordinator from 1999-2011 before leaving for a decade at Clemson.

And he’s not wrong about Oklahoma’s Big 12 dominance, which included 10 conference championships in 18 years under Stoops, the first seven coming with Venables as the team’s DC (2000-11). That run of Big 12 success continued even after Stoops’ 2017 retirement, with the Sooners winning the Big 12 in each of Lincoln Riley‘s first four seasons as head coach between 2017-2020 before he left for USC at the end of the 2021 season.

Venables’ comments about the Big 12 come as Oklahoma is enjoying a bouceback second season in the SEC after the Sooners finished 6-7 overall and just 2-6 in league play in 2024. Venables and Oklahoma (5-1, 1-1 SEC) opened Year 2 with five consecutive victories before falling to former Big 12 rival Texas in last weekend’s Red River Rivalry game.

Of course, it doesn’t get any easier for the Sooners, which closes out the regular season with five straight SEC games against ranked competition, including road games at Tennessee and Alabama before hosting No. 10 LSU to end the year. But first, No. 14 Oklahoma hits the road to take on unranked South Carolina at 12:45 pm ET Saturday on the SEC Network.