Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables Calls Rigorous Schedule ‘Incredibly Exciting’

OU coach Brent Venables is up for the challenge that lies ahead of him and his team.

The Sooners will play arguably their hardest schedule of Venables’ tenure in 2026. Three of the teams on Oklahoma’s schedule — Georgia, Ole Miss and Texas A&M — reached the College Football Playoff last year, while Texas and Michigan narrowly missed out and battled each other in the Cheez-It Bowl.

Oklahoma and the other 15 SEC members will also have a new wrinkle in their schedules this year — they will each play nine conference games instead of eight.

Venables’ first four years in Norman and first two years in the SEC have prepared him well for the rigorous slate.

“In a league where there’s not a whole lot of room for error, it puts one more on top of a lot of other challenging venues, whether it’s home or away,” Venables said on his SEC Network appearance on Thursday. “The challenge of what's in front of us in the SEC and in what we have in our non-conference… our guys are really looking forward to it. It’s incredibly exciting.”

❝Incredibly exciting—the challenge of what's in front of us❞

📺 @SECNetwork pic.twitter.com/xYb4Rfaejo
— Oklahoma Football (@OU_Football) June 11, 2026

The start to OU’s season couldn’t be much more difficult.

After what should be a blowout win for OU at home against UTEP in Week 1, the Sooners will face Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, one week later. The Sooners will then host New Mexico — a respectable team from the Mountain West — in Week 3 before taking down back-to-back reigning SEC champion Georgia in Athens, GA, in Week 4.

Venables knows how important it is for his team to start the season well, and he also knows how difficult that stretch will be. Because of that, he has preached the importance of offseason discipline since the end of the 2025 season.

“For us, I think it gives our guys a lot of motivation, a lot of juice, a lot of excitement, and a lot to look forward to throughout the course of the summer,” Venables said. “I think we play our first Power Four opponent at home sometime in late October.”

The schedule never gets “easy” for the Sooners, as they’ll battle Texas in their fifth game on Oct. 10.

OU will play its most manageable four-game stretch after the Red River Rivalry, as it will host Kentucky and South Carolina and face Mississippi State and Florida on the road.

The difficulty picks up in the Sooners’ final three games. They’ll play their final two home games against Ole Miss and Texas A&M — which combined for 24 wins last year — before taking on Eliah Drinkwitz’s Missouri squad on the road in their regular-season finale.

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“It’s a great, great challenge for our guys, but it’s something that we’re, without question, looking forward to,” Venables said.

On the outside, one may have trouble seeing a path to the CFP for the Sooners. Three of their opponents made the field last year, and they’ll also have to face hostility from opposing fans in their games against Michigan, Texas, Missouri and Mississippi State.

But this is nothing new for OU.

Last year, the Sooners won four games in a row against quality competition — Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri and LSU — to end the regular season and reach the CFP for the first time under Venables.

Venables’ squad is battle-tested, and he believes it can return to the College Football Playoff as a result.

“I think for our guys, as much as anything, it doesn’t matter what everybody else thinks or says or what their opinions are," Venables said. "It’s about what we do, taking care of business — we control the controllables. With the returning experience we have that was a part of that… it's only unthinkable if we don’t think it.

“You have to start over, it’s a new team, it’s certainly a new DNA. But a lot of that experience — we have 15 starters back — those guys will be able to lean on those moments as we build this year’s team.”

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