How College Football Parity Can Benefit Oklahoma against Top-Ranked Texas

As two-touchdown underdogs against their rivals, the Sooners just witnessed during their bye week that no college football game is a lock anymore.

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables / BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

From his couch last weekend, Oklahoma coach Brent Venables witnessed chaos ensue throughout college football, especially in the conference the Sooners now call theirs. 

At 4-1, the Sooners got the weekend off before heading to Dallas to play No. 1 Texas at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. And even the Longhorns, also enjoying a bye week, wouldn’t have that top spot if not for what transpired during Week 6 of the college football season. 

A week after beating Georgia to leapfrog Texas for that No. 1 ranking, Alabama lost to SEC bottom dweller Vanderbilt. The Crimson Tide was one of three top-10 SEC teams to suffer an upset Saturday, as then-No. 4 Tennessee lost to Arkansas and Texas A&M handled then-No. 9 Missouri.  

“(I watched) all of them,” Venables said Monday night during his coach’s show. “I love college football like you guys. I love it. A lot of anxious moments, and you learn a lot just about ball watching other people go through different scenarios and what not. What would you do here? Probably everybody, ‘That's what I would have done too,’ right? Me? I'll take a guess at what I would do there, and then punish myself if it was wrong and celebrate big time if it was good. 

“But it was a really good day and a lot of fun, which, as much as anything, you see where there's more and more parity in college football. It's just another day of affirmation as much as anything, and I like it. I like it. I've always liked the underdog. It's always, good underdog stories, it’s fun. And Darth Vader got taken down. Not that that's, again I don’t want to be the poster child for Alabama people, but what a cool, I know (Vanderbilt coach) Clark (Lea) well, and that’s really cool.”

Venables’ embracement of the underdog will be necessary as his team opened as two-touchdown dogs to Texas, which is 5-0 and the only Power Four team that hasn’t trailed in a game yet this season. That parity might have just benefitted the Longhorns, but if last week’s omens leak into the Cotton Bowl, then that would play into the Sooners’ favor. 

“I think what the SEC does, it taxes you in a way from a mental intensity that you have to prepare every week like it's a championship game every Saturday,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “And from top to bottom in this conference, anybody can beat anybody. And I think that we learned that this weekend. And so the value for me is, it just was able to reinforce a lot of the things we've been talking about as a team and anytime you have living examples, for young people especially, I think it's helpful that they can see and understand why our messaging is what it is.” 

After only three full weeks of SEC play, only three SEC teams are still unbeaten in conference play – Texas A&M, Texas and LSU. And while the Aggies are 3-0, Texas and LSU have each played only one conference game so far. 

A lot can be attributed to the heightened parity in college football, from NIL dealings, to the transfer portal, to conference realignment that erased much of the familiarity between these teams. 

“The margins are closer than they've ever been in the game of college football, and you're seeing that week in and week out, and so you gotta always be prepared and ready to play," Venables said Tuesday at his weekly news conference. "And I think there's always a human psyche that's a very undervalued piece of when you're dealing with 18- to 24-, 25-year-old young guys. 

“I think the real challenge as a coach is week in and week out getting your players to buy into starting completely over and doing the things that are necessary in order to win this week, regardless of what happened last week – not to look ahead and put everything you got into this moment and to be emotionally, physically, fundamentally invested in this moment. You know, eyes forward, what's in front of you.”