Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables dropped one of the more baffling comments you’ll hear this season. In discussing the SEC’s strength versus the Big 12, he said: “This isn’t the old Big 12 days where Oklahoma destroys everybody every single week except one game of the year.” That line is wild, not just wrong, but a glaring case of revisionist memory.
Here’s the thing: Oklahoma did dominate back in those days, but not under Venables. He inherited a program built by others. To act like he’s presided over that dominance is just a really bad take. The records tell a different story. Venables is just 10-8 against the Big 12 with some really bad losses to date.
Let’s get real: Venables is talking about an era he wasn’t even leading. He’s leaning on myth. Meanwhile, under his watch, the Sooners lost to K-State, TCU, Baylor, WVU, Texas Tech, Kansas, and yes, Oklahoma State too. All teams, he claims, weren’t supposed to beat Oklahoma in the “old days.” And they have. Consistently.
So when Venables says, “we don’t dominate every week anymore,” he’s ignoring that under him, that baseline of dominance never really existed. He’s projecting a legacy that isn’t his. He wasn’t the one winning conference titles in those times he references. He’s standing in a glass house after throwing stones.
Venables could have said, “We face a new level of competition now,” and that’d be reasonable. Instead, he chose defensiveness and exaggeration. That’s an odd strategy when your body of work doesn’t support the claim.
If he wants to earn respect in the SEC era, he should start by acknowledging where he inherited the program, own the losses, double down on improvement, and not rewrite what was. Because talking like you once “destroyed everybody” when you didn’t is just embarrassment in real time.
