Oklahoma-Tennessee Preview: One Big Thing

Not only is Josh Heupel back in town, and not only are the Sooners opening their SEC era, but Saturday's showdown with the Vols is OU's biggest game in a generation.

Bob Stoops and Brent Venables / Matthew Emmons-Imagn Images

NORMAN — If favorite son Josh Huepel coming back home, where he quarterbacked your team to its only national championship of the last 40 years, is merely the third-biggest storyline of the week, you know it must be a big game.

Oklahoma-Tennessee is all of that.

The No. 15-ranked Sooners and No. 6 Vols tangle at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. ESPN’s “College GameDay” built their set on the OU campus this week and begins their festivities at 8 a.m. The game is nationally televised on ABC.

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How to Watch Oklahoma-Tennessee

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It’s a big moment for Brent Venables. In his third year as the Sooners’ head coach, OU’s 3-0 start has been uneven. Just 6-7 in his first year and 10-3 last year with blown leads in each loss, beating Tennessee in prime time would go a long way to quelling any lingering doubts that athletic director Joe Castiglione hired the right man. 

Venables needs this.

It’s a big moment for Jackson Arnold. It’s his fourth career start, and the first three were nothing special — not for a 5-star quarterback who was the national high school player of the year and is next in line at Heisman U. Arnold just playing “clean” would suffice — no turnovers, no big mental busts — but fans want to see Arnold whip the football downfield with that golden arm of his. OU is 131st in the nation in yards per completion. 

Arnold needs this.

It’s a big moment for the Oklahoma defense. Has Venables re-forged OU into a title contender backed by a fearsome defense? There was improvement from Year 1 to Year 2, and all signs point to another giant leap forward this year — but that was against a soft non-conference schedule. Conventional wisdom is that the Sooner defense is legit. But they haven’t played anyone like Tennessee yet. If the Vols put up 40 points and 500 yards on Saturday night, what will the narrative be on the Oklahoma defense and new coordinator Zac Alley? 

The OU defense needs this.

Ultimately, there’s one entity who probably needs an OU win more than Venables, more than Arnold, more than the defense.

Sooner Nation.

OU fans who couldn’t believe their eyes 25 years ago as Heupel and Venables and an all-time OU defense overcame the odds and eventually reeled in the program’s seventh national championship. Without revising history, they also should remember lodging an awful lot of complaints as the 2000 Sooners waded through some muck against an uninspiring non-conference schedule and Big 12 opener with Kansas.

No one really knew how good that OU team was until the famous Red October run — not even Bob Stoops, who got on the headset late in the first half of a 63-14 victory over Texas and told his coaching staff, “Boys, we might be pretty good.”

That’s what it took — an historic win over No. 11 Texas, another over No. 2 Kansas State, and another over No. 1 Nebraska — for Sooner Nation to realize that Sooner Magic was back. Another tight win over No. 23 Texas A&M in College Station, and more tension in wins at Oklahoma State and against Kansas State for the Big 12 title sent OU to the Orange Bowl, where Heupel and Venables and that defense took down No. 3 Florida State.

Clearly, in those days, it was not unusual for the Big 12 to field five ranked teams. Now, 25 years later, that kind of distinction happens regularly in the SEC.

This is 2024, and if Venables is the right coach, if Arnold is a championship quarterback, if OU does have a dominating defense again, it needs to start this week.

It may be 10 days early, but Saturday needs to be the start of a new Red October.

There are plenty of parallels.

OU started that year ranked No. 19 in the AP Poll. They started this year ranked No. 16. That team was led by a fiery, defensive-minded head coach and a hungry young co-defensive coordinator. So is this one. That team had a first-year offensive coordinator forged in iron-tough Western Pennsylvania, Mark Mangino. This one has a first-year OC forged in the fires of Muskogee, Seth Littrell (who played and coached for Mangino). That defense was led by a gritty, talented linebacker, Rocky Calmus. So is this one, Danny Stutsman.

This year, upcoming opponents Auburn and South Carolina aren’t ranked, but No. 1 Texas certainly is. A road trip to Ole Miss today probably isn’t as daunting as a road trip to Kansas State was 25 years ago. Alabama in 2024 is comparable to what the Cornhuskers were in 2000.

That team’s challenge — taking down a pantheon in three consecutive weekends — is now simply spread out from September to November.

But hey, that’s life in the SEC, apparently.

Saturday’s opponent is the first top-six opponent since 2016 (No. 3 Ohio State). Oklahoma also hosted a top-five opponent in 2012 (No. 5 Notre Dame).

While the Sooners lost both those, in the big picture, this one is bigger — because it’s a conference game.

Oklahoma’s very first Southeastern Conference game.

Bottom line, this is OU’s biggest home game since No. 2 Texas Tech came to Norman in 2008. The Sooners won that one easily, 65-21, on their way back to the national championship game.

That night’s unforgettable events — a nationally televised game on ABC, a Heisman-worthy performance by Sam Bradford (who was coached by Heupel), a record blowout — were preceded by a raucous “College GameDay” pregame show from the OU campus that morning.

Just like this year. 

Of course, the night came to a frenzied finish when joyous OU fans heard the screeching, wailing tones of House of Pain and knew it was time to “Jump Around.”

OU fans need this.

No game will ever top the 2000 Red October finish, when Nebraska jumped to a 14-0 lead and then got run out of the building in a 31-14 Oklahoma triumph. That game signaled the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another. It officially and thunderously brought OU out of a decade of mediocrity and into an era of only championships. 

And it set Oklahoma football on its current path, where beating ranked conference opponents should be the expectation and national championships should be the goal.

OU fans need this.