Brent Venables: Parity Isn't Going Anywhere in College Football

NORMAN — With most teams having passed the midpoint in SEC play, and the others set to pass the mark this weekend, the race to the SEC Championship Game is murkier than it was even before the season.

Upsets have made the league as wide open as ever.

Entering this weekend’s action, no team is undefeated in conference play and 10 teams still have two or fewer league losses.

“I think there’s more belief that everybody can beat everybody,” Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said. “I think that part of it is without question. There’s just too much evidence. It’s not theory. There’s just too much evidence, certainly in just our conference, let alone college football.”

The Sooners are one of those teams in that logjam of teams in the league race at 2-2 in SEC play. So while losses to Michigan, Georgia, and Kentucky have left Oklahoma’s College Football Playoff hopes on life support, there is at least still some life left.

Already this season, seven unranked teams have knocked off ranked opponents in SEC play. Florida, the Sooners’ opponents next week, have been on both sides of that coin, falling to South Carolina when the Gators were ranked 16th and beating No. 7 Texas after falling out of The Associated Press poll.

Five of those involved top 10 teams being knocked off by unranked opponents.

Last season, there was just one such outcome in SEC play — unranked Florida’’s 29-21 win over No. 9 Texas in early October.

It’s not just the SEC either. Just last week, unranked UCF knocked off No. 2 BYU and Cincinnati beat No. 8 Texas Tech.

Earlier this season, Oklahoma State knocked off No. 6 Oregon.

Venables said it hasn’t changed the day-to-day approach on either side of the coin.

“You want your guys to stay engaged, have a great self-awareness, understand what our strengths are, what our weaknesses are, what we need to continue to work at to get better,” Venables said, “and keeping your guys hungry and motivated and together has always been the challenge of coaching and being in the locker room. But everybody is dealing with the same set of challenges. Handling success and failure both is like it’s always been. It’s incredibly important. Well-managed success leads to continued success, and well-managed failure, same thing.”

That parity certainly isn’t going away, and with the College Football Playoff expanding to 24 teams next season, more chances are going to be there for new programs to get into the championship hunt and teams that fall during the regular season to climb their way back into the discussion — or never leave even after stumbles.

“I like it in college football,” Venables said. “I think it’s exciting, and I think everybody has a little bit of hope through the new environment. … There’s probably several fan bases and programs that are transitioning to that new environment, where for decades and decades the parity wasn’t certainly there. And the blue bloods, if you will, I don’t know if those days are over or not. I don’t think that they are, but I do think that there’s the exciting thing about maybe a year from now is that there’s going to be more opportunity and access to having an opportunity to play in the postseason and win it all.”

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