Oklahoma-UCF: One Big Thing

NORMAN — Two Saturdays ago in Dallas, Oklahoma was still the underdog.

Midway through Brent Venables’ second year as head coach and less than 10 months removed from a miserable 6-7 season, few believed the Sooners would upset Texas.

But OU played like an underdog and shocked the college football world, and in the span of four short hours, Venables’ squad went from being the hunter to being the hunted.

Now, Oklahoma has enjoyed two weeks of nonstop publicity, been invited to national talk shows, received metaphorical pats on the back and all the flowers.

In fact, according to ESPN’s FPI, the Sooners are now the favorite to win this year’s national championship.

That’s a lot all at once.

Minutes after the Texas game, in the passion of celebrating their victory, OU players asked, “What they gon’ say now?”

Well . . .

Can Oklahoma handle success?

Venables talked this week about how “habits don't establish themselves,” and the players and coaches need to continue to “starve the distractions.”

One of Venables’ most poignant takes over the past two years has been about how handling success is actually more challenging than handling failure.

“Mismanaged success is a very normal thing when you are in these positions,” Venables said last week.

Now, the numbers say Oklahoma has a 90 percent chance to win — not just Saturday’s game against UCF, but every game the rest of the season.

Talk about a recipe for disaster.

“I understand, yeah, we're doing some good things,” offensive lineman Caleb Shaffer said this week. “But this is the moment where people expect us to be complacent and think we're okay which is not what's going to happen. That's not how we're trained.”

Venables said living through 6-7 in 2022 gave this team the proper callous, and they’ve worked to attain this level of success. Venables said that practice the Monday after the Texas game was a tough one, and players may have come home from Dallas feeling like they lost that game.

The teaching moments in the Cotton Bowl were plentiful, he said, and so far this squad has been all about putting in the work to go 1-0 each week.

"Obviously we celebrated. It was a great win, a win that we all wanted," said cornerback Kendel Dolby. "But we’re 1-0. That’s our goal every week, go 1-0. We’re not looking too high or too low. That’s kind of been our mindset. It’s been easy to move on from that win. Yeah, it was a great win but we’re on to the next."

“This is a very invested group of young men,” Venables said. “ … Keeping two hands on the wheel, white-knuckle grip with both hands, is something that we’re focused on.”

“I think it's been good for us just being able to stay present,” said quarterback Dillon Gabriel, “and I say that because that's what we've been doing thus far, and being able to just be in the moment, take advantage of every opportunity. And as cliche as it sounds, it’s the routine and things like that that people can get bored with, but just being dialed into, preparing our butt off and coming to Saturday and being able to let it loose. I just think it's the combination of all that will help us.”

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