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SEC Announces Oklahoma's 2025 Conference Football Schedule

The dates are now official for a schedule in which the Sooners face the same opponents as this year but with the venues flipped.

John E. Hoover

John E. Hoover / Sooners On SI
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Oklahoma’s schedule doesn’t get any easier in 2025.

The Southeastern Conference released its 2025 conference schedule on Wednesday night, and an OU slate that was one of the toughest in the country this fall only gets harder.

OU’s final seven games next year are against teams that are playing in bowl games this season — six of whom beat the Sooners in 2024. And that's the way coach Brent Venables wants it.

"It's exciting. It's an easy thing to sell," Venables said Wednesday night during the ESPN schedule reveal show. "Kids are attracted to playing on the biggest stages, in the biggest venues, and they want challenge — if they're the right players. They're looking forward to a challenge. They don't want something easy. And so there's a great familiarity in recognition for the conference being the toughest, the deepest, the most exciting, the biggest challenge, in all of college football. So guys are attracted to that."

The non-conference schedule opens Aug. 30 versus Illinois State, then ramps up with 2023 national champion Michigan coming to Norman on Sept. 6. The Sooners then head to Philadelphia to visit Temple on Sept. 20.

After opening SEC play on Sept. 20 at home against Auburn — one of two teams the Sooners beat in 2024 — they’ll have an open date, followed by their final non-conference game against Kent State.

Oklahoma football schedule
SEC

After that, it’s a heavyweight street fight every week for Venables’ fourth team as a head coach.

The Sooners play Texas in the annual Red River Rivalry on Dallas on Oct. 11 (OU is the visiting team next year), then hit the road to face upstart South Carolina — OU's first visit to Columbia — on Oct. 18. OU then finishes out October by hosting Ole Miss.

November is a gauntlet for the Sooners: Nov. 1 at Tennessee (the Sooners' only previous visit there was Baker Mayfield's breakout game in 2015), followed by a second open date, then a closing stretch similar to this year, featuring a road trip to Alabama (the Sooners' first visit to Tuscaloosa) and home games with Missouri (the Sooners are 67-25-5 all-time against Missouri and have won their last 18 home games in the series, with the last loss in 1966) and LSU (the Tigers have never played a football game at Gaylor Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. 

Alabama was Oklahoma's only other conference victory this season, although that should look much more daunting in Tuscaloosa.

In its first year as an SEC member, Oklahoma was just 2-6 in conference play this season — the program’s worst winning percentage in league play (.250) since going 1-4 (.200) in 1931.

"It was a baptism by fire, if you will," Venables said. " ... It's a very real thing."

The Sooners dominated their final 24 season in the Big 12, winning 14 conference championships, but after not going more than two years without a title during that stretch, they now haven't won a trophy in the last four years, since the 2020 season.

In OU's first two seasons in the SEC, the league has maintained its traditional eight-game conference schedule. But it's widely anticipated that the schedule will shift radically in 2026 as the likelihood of nine conference games approaches.

Each SEC team will play eight conference football games plus at least one required opponent from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12 or major independent, and each team will have two open dates.

The top two teams in the league standings based on winning percentage will play in the 34th SEC Football Championship Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Saturday, Dec. 6. 

OU Media Relations contributed to this report.

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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