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Oklahoma-West Virginia GameDay: One Big Thing

Sooners head coach Brent Venables says the team's accountability, ownership and motivation "starts with me," but lately WVU looks like the more motivated team.
John E. Hoover|
Oklahoma-West Virginia GameDay: One Big Thing
Oklahoma-West Virginia GameDay: One Big Thing

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Oklahoma Sooners

NORMAN — We asked the question last week ahead of Oklahoma’s game in Stillwater, and it deserves to be asked again this week.

Who is this team?

Maybe the loss to Oklahoma State actually pulled back the curtain a little further. Maybe now we actually know who Oklahoma is.

Maybe these Sooners are actually still growing as a football team. Maybe they’re immature, inexperienced and just not a great football team yet. Maybe Brent Venables was 100 percent right — this team has a long way to go.

“It just starts with me,” Venables said. “Again, attitude, accountability, ownership, motivation, how you teach and how you correct. Get the guys to have the right perspective. You're in this sport handling both success and failure and everything in between is important."

Kickoff with West Virginia on Saturday night is 6 o'clock. The Sooners are 7-2 overall and 4-2 in Big 12 play, reeling after consecutive losses at Kansas and OSU.

“A couple of tough back-to-back games, obviously,” Venables said. “But our guys have really responded well. They’ve got a great mindset. I love the leadership on this team. They’ve shown a real willingness to continue to work and invest. Our players have invested a tremendous amount this season. They’re anxious to have a really strong finish.”

OU has been better in 2023 than they were in 2022. Last year’s win total was surpassed halfway through this season as the Sooners roared out of the gate to a a 7-0 start. They drew motivation from going just 6-7 the year before, from everyone pontificating about how bad they were.

That’s great.

But this week Oklahoma takes on a West Virginia team that is truly motivated by low external expectations. In the preseason, OU was a trendy pick to return to the Big 12 title game. West Virginia? They were picked to finish 14th out of 14 — below Texas Tech and Baylor, below TCU, below newcomers BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston.

Now that’s motivation, and WVU has responded by starting 6-3 and is currently tied for second in the Big 12 standings.

“I think motivation is important,” Mountaineers coach Neal Brown said this week. “It’s something that we keep in front of them because until the year’s over, we still have something to prove. It all starts with that's what people thought of us. That's what they thought of this program at the start of the year and we’re out to prove that wrong right up until the end.”

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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