The Oklahoma Sooners are in need of a bounce-back season after posting a 6-7 record a year ago. Head coach Brent Venables simply can’t afford another year that isn’t up to the OU standard, or he’ll be gone.
Joel Klatt, FOX Sports College Football’s lead play-by-play commentator, believes in the changes Venables has made this offseason, at least enough to barely include the Sooners in his post-spring ball Top 25 list. However, Klatt also issued a warning to Oklahoma ahead of the 2025 season on his podcast, “The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast“.
“A lot of people up until this point have overlooked Oklahoma in this process but I’m not going to do that,” Klatt said. “I think Oklahoma is gonna be a really good football team … Here’s the hard part for Oklahoma and you Sooner fans, you know this. The schedule is still absolutely rigid … In a lot of ways, it’s terrible. Week two, you gotta host Michigan in Norman. And then their last seven games, check this out, brutal stretch: Texas, at South Carolina, Ole Miss, at Tennessee, bye week, at Alabama, Missouri and LSU. I’ll tell you what man, I know that the SEC hasn’t had the national champ the last couple of years, but the depth is there. And there’s not many easy games in that conference. And this Oklahoma schedule is evidence of that.”
Klatt also called the OU schedule this season “terrible” and “brutal”. Oklahoma’s SEC strength-of-schedule in their first two seasons in the league (especially compared to Texas’) has been a talking point ever since the new conference schedule model was announced. It’s even more evident in 2025 than it was last year, as the Sooners have the nation’s toughest schedule this season.
The Longhorns dodge all of the best teams in the SEC with the exception of Georgia, just like they did last year. The Sooners must face all of the best teams in the SEC with the exception of Georgia, just like they did last year. That’s real inequality in the best and deepest conference in college football, and it’s lead to some of the issues Oklahoma is having right now, and some of the success Texas is currently having.
However, Klatt believes there’s reason for optimism in Norman, primarily due to the new battery on offense and Venables re-assuming command of the defense.
“The offense last year was a disaster,” Klatt said. “So they got better, they brought in one of the really good offensive coordinators in the country. They got in Ben Arbuckle and he brought his quarterback. And so John Mateer comes in at quarterback, that will help them, there’s no doubt. Meanwhile, Brent Venables is going to call the defense, so he’s gonna do what he’s best at. Mateer comes in from Washington State. Arbuckle comes in to fix the offense. Venables goes back to calling the defense, which is obviously what his forte was at Clemson when they were winning national championships. And they should be better.”
Oklahoma has the bad luck of playing a very difficult schedule in one of the biggest seasons for the program in recent memory. The Sooners are hoping that they’ve improved exponentially from last year, so that they can navigate the gauntlet and rebound in a big way in 2025.
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