While Everyone Reminds Them SEC Play is Just Around the Corner, Oklahoma Players Are 'Sick of It'

Danny Stutsman and others understand why "it gets said more than it needs to" as OU's level of physicality must be raised and coaches are trying to "get us fired up."

Oklahoma Sooners linebacker Danny Stutsman / BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY

Apparently, Jerry Schmidt and the rest of the Oklahoma coaching staff isn’t shy about reminding the team what conference they’ll be playing in next season.

“It gets said a little bit more than I think it needs to,” said linebacker Danny Stutsman.

Stutsman will be a senior in 2024, when the Sooners change affiliations from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference. He’s the heart and soul of the team, the face of the defense and the standard for excellence in the locker room.

And he’s ready to run through that SEC wall.

“Absolutely. We love the challenge,” Stutsman said. “Hearing from Schmitty every single day about the league we’re going into to gets us fired up.”

But Stutsman believes all the talk from the Sooners' strength coach and others is unnecessary because this is Oklahoma. There are seven national championship banners on the wall, seven statues in Heisman Park, 50 conference titles — more than any other college football program — in the record books. He believes that players at OU don’t necessarily need to be reminded every day that they’re changing leagues.

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“You just kind of get sick of it in a sense because at Oklahoma, the best is the standard,” Stutsman said. “We’re not really changing how we prepare. But having those expectations rise is only going to raise the level for us.”

Few would disagree that Oklahoma’s defense over the last decade or so has dropped below what would be considered the standard in the SEC — certainly the standard that has produced 14 of college football’s last 21 national champions. While transformative quarterbacks like Tim Tebow, Cam Newton and Joe Burrow have occasionally risen to drive their teams to eternal glory, it’s usually been a bone-crushing defense that powered teams like Alabama, LSU and Georgia to the title.

To that end, Oklahoma may be getting closer. At least that’s what defensive tackle Da’Jon Terry thinks. After beginning his career at Kansas, Terry transferred to OU from Tennessee, where he played for two seasons. He’s seen from the inside what an SEC defense looks like, and he’s lived life in the trenches in college football’s best conference.

Does OU feel like an SEC program?

“Yes sir it does,” Terry said. “Business is business when you're on the field. You have your fun when you're off the field but when you're on the field everything's business. And I feel like that's what separates a lot of programs. So yes sir I definitely feel like it's an SEC environment. From the coaches to the players, everybody's bought in.”

Schmidt and head coach Brent Venables and others standing over everyone before practice, yelling about the coming challenges in the SEC, is like chumming for sharks. It whips everyone into a frenzy, and that frenzy gets intense when drills begin.

“A lot of trash talking,” Terry said. “It's a lot more trash talking in the SEC, I can say that from playing. It's a lot more trash talking. They be getting after it on the field, so I like trash talking. So everybody been trash talking and stuff. But we all still, at the end of the day we come together as a team.”

That intensity builds, and it carries over when the contact starts. Players say practices are more physical now than they have been.

“You have to build the physicality now with the league we are going into,” Stutsman said. “It’s what is required. Practices should be harder than the games so games come easy. The offensive side has done a terrific job of bringing guys with the top end of physicality and that’s what we love to see.”

Terry said his new teammates “used to ask me” what things are like in the SEC.   

“But at the end of the day, I feel like football is football,” he said. “I mean, I'd say it's more physical. But at the end of the day, football is football. And everybody, once you get in it, you're gonna get adjusted.”

The Sooners are roughly halfway through spring drills. They’ll polish things up with the Spring Game on April 20, and OU fans can assess for themselves whether the Sooners are more physical — and whether they’re ready for the SEC.

Meanwhile, through the end of spring, through the fires of summer, and through the grind of preseason training camp, Schmidt and the rest of the OU staff will continue to remind the players of the many challenges that lie ahead.

“I think that’s what they want to do,” Stutsman said, “get us fired up and ready to get out there and put on a show.”