Oklahoma football: Five New Year’s priorities for Sooner football in 2022

The primary goal of Oklahoma football every season is simple and straightforward: Win a national championship.

That goal never changes. Every team aspires to that level of success, but for all but a very few it amounts to nothing more than a pipe dream.

But to be in national title consideration, the Sooners are also keenly aware that the path to the College Football Playoff runs through the conference championship, something that Oklahoma has dominated in the 26-year history of the Big 12 Conference.

The Sooners have won 14 Big 12 titles, including six in a row between 2015 and 2020. The nearest challenger is Texas with three conference championships. Oklahoma’s history of winning conference titles, however, goes much further back than the Big 12. The Sooners’ 50 conference championships all-time are the most of any college team at the FBS level.

In order to win championships at any level, though, and compete with the very best, you have to have the right people in the right positions and doing the right things and, of course, you have to have a lot of things go your way over the course of the season. In college football, unlike most of the other collegiate sports, you only have a 12-game regular schedule, so just one or two defeats along the way can derail hopes of a championship season.

No team is absolutely bullet proof. Not even Nick Saban-coached Alabama, as Georgia proved in the CFP championship game last month (this coming after Bama soundly thrashed Georgia in the SEC championship game a month earlier).

There are always changes and adjustments to be made every season, but never more so than when there is a head-coaching change. And that is one of the challenges facing the Oklahoma football program as it looks ahead and continues preparations for the 2022 college football season.

From the time he stepped off the airplane after accepting OU job in early December, new head coach and former Sooner assistant Brent Venables hit the ground running, and he hasn’t let up since. The 51-year-old Venables added seven new assistant coaches, secured the 8th-ranked 2022 recruiting class and landed battle-tested Dillon Gabriel out of the transfer portal as the next Sooner starting quarterback.

In addition to the 21 members of OU’s 2022 recruiting class, the Sooners welcome 10 newcomer transfers to the roster for the 2022 season (six on defense, including three defensive backs, and four on offense).

Venables believes they could still add a player or two to the 2022 class before the summer, but for all intended purposes, attention now turns to spring practice sessions, the 2023 recruiting cycle and preparations for the 2022 fall college football season.

Here are five main priorities for Venables and his coaching staff, in no particular order, as Oklahoma regroups and builds toward the 2022 season: