Column: It's Time to Say It: Oklahoma's Similarities to the 2000 National Title Team Are Uncanny

OK. It’s time to have that conversation.

Yes, that one.

The one about all the similarities between Oklahoma’s 2000 national championship season and the Sooners’ current 2023 campaign.

Now 6-0 on the season and up to No. 5 in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 and fresh off a feel-good stunner in the Cotton Bowl, we can finally have … The Talk.

Brent Venables did.

“It reminds me a little bit of that 1999-2000 (team),” Venables said Saturday after OU’s epic 34-30 victory over Texas in Dallas.

So if it’s OK for the Sooners’ head man to say it, it’s OK for the rest of us.

The discussion has already been broached many, many times, but usually only from the dim echo chambers of fandom — message boards, talk radio, social media.

It’s been way too early to bring it out into the open. But Venables did just that in his postgame press conference.

Could Oklahoma be sneaking up on the program’s eighth national championship?

Will we look back at this moment in January and try to identify all the markers we believed we should have seen coming? Hard to say. But one thing is certain: the similarities are there, and they’re worth bringing up now.

First, the obvious: Bob Stoops came from Kansas State, became the nation’s best defensive coordinator and was arguably the most important figure in quickly building a formidable Southern program into a national champion. All Steve Spurrier needed was a defense to go from good to elite, and Stoops gave him a great one.

Venables traveled that exact same path, giving Clemson defensive gravitas — and two national championships — after Dabo Swinney had brought Clemson along a similar path of high-powered offenses, punch-line defenses.

Especially, like Florida, in bowl games. Spurrier’s nadir was a 62-24 loss to Nebraska in 1995-96, Swinney’s was a 70-33 loss to West Virginia. Stoops and Venables were brought in immediately to fix the defenses, and the results were the same: national championships.

Then Stoops took his first head coaching job at Oklahoma and instantly restored pride to the fan base in his first year.

Venables also took his first head coaching job at OU and, with Lincoln Riley’s apathy toward defense no longer a hindrance, Venables also brought back a measure of pride to Sooner Nation.

Stoops’ first season at OU finished with a 7-5 record. That included a handful of close losses in which the Sooners led early (Notre Dame, Texas, Texas Tech) but faded down the stretch as the previous regime’s lack of depth and fitness training cost them in tight games.

The exact same thing happened to Venables’ first team last year as the Sooners went 6-7 and withered in the fourth quarter of five close games. The culprits were familiar: a lack of roster depth due to substandard recruiting and the difficult transition from Bennie Wylie to Jerry Schmidt.

There are other obvious similarities, such as a sturdy, rebuilt defense and a high-octane offense.

But OU in 2000 and 2023 both share other, less tangible qualities that are harder to identify.

Even for Venables.

“No offense to those guys back in the day. No offense to these guys,” Venables said. “But I’ve used the word — we had a bunch of misfits back in 2000. We didn't know how good we could be.”

Some of the players from that team were scarred up from losing under John Blake, and from the way the program’s championship culture had deteriorated for the better part of a decade.

This year’s team was also scarred — by going 6-7 last year, yes, but also by the one-sided direction that Riley had taken the program: offense was the priority, defense was optional.

“That was a group, they were tough as all get out,” Venables said. “They were raggedy up. They just came to every day and went to work. And these guys have done exactly that. We're a little shinier in some spots than that group, but also I think the parallels are that we didn't know how good we can be. What that team was committed to was just improving each and every day.”

The truest parallels may be more coincidence than anything, but can’t be ignored.

Just like in 1999-2000, OU has an unheralded, left-handed quarterback who has suddenly thrown himself into the Heisman race, and an absolute thumper and All-America candidate at middle linebacker (from Florida) who plays the game with a little bit of panache and a lot of grit.

“The guys who were the two best friends on the team that people didn’t know was Torrance Marshall, our middle linebacker, and Josh Heupel,” Venables said. “Two guys from completely polar-opposite ends of the earth. One from Dade County, Florida, and one from Aberdeen (South Dakota) or somewhere up north in the farmland. Guys couldn't be more opposite as people. But man, those were the real fiber of our football team.”

Dillon Gabriel has imprinted on the Oklahoma offense, and Danny Stutsman has molded the Oklahoma defense in his own image.

The similarities are just uncanny.

The Sooners from near a quarter-century ago also had a handful of newcomers — freshmen and transfers (including Marshall and Heupel) — who were recruited by Stoops (and Venables, Mike Leach, Mark Mangino, Mike Stoops, etc.) and stepped in alongside those scarred-up returners and put in the work to help lift the program out of decline.

Thanks to the transfer portal and the nation’s No. 4-ranked freshman class, the 2023 Sooners have plenty of new faces who have helped elevate the program.

“This is a team that has grown incredibly close over the last several months,” Venables said. “These guys have worked hard at that. That doesn't just happen. There's got to be a lot of intentionality. Relationships take lot of work. We've challenged them. We've nurtured that.”

One of the defining moments for that 1999-2000 team was its famous “Red October” run — coming from preseason rankings of No. 19 in the AP poll and No. 20 in the coaches poll (exactly where this team started, but flipped) and beating No. 11 Texas, No. 2 Kansas State and No. 1 Nebraska.

This year’s squad has no chance of replicating that kind of run — as of right now, No. 23 Kansas is the only ranked team left on the schedule — but Saturday’s takedown of then-No. 3 Texas was only slightly less shocking than OU’s 63-14 stomping of the Longhorns in 2000. (Texas was a 3-point favorite then, and closed as a 4-point favorite on Saturday.)

Facing one of the easiest schedules in program history in 2000, when OU opened with UTEP, Arkansas State and Rice, it was hard to know just how good the Sooners were in 2000 before Red October.

The same could certainly be said for this year’s team and this year’s schedule.

But just like 2000, maybe Saturday’s win over Texas finally revealed something telling about the 2023 Sooners.

“For us to realize our potential and have an opportunity to be a great team,” Venables said, “we've got to be a team that knows each other, that loves each other, that understands the culture and the defensive standard of excellence that this program is representing.

“And these guys have been amazing.”

If the similarities to 2000 continue over the next eight weeks, then “amazing” will be just the beginning.

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