Oklahoma football: What to expect at Big 12 Media Days this week
By Chip Rouse
Big 12 Media Days, the unofficial start to the college football season, kicks off on Wednesday this week in Arlington, Texas, in what will be the final appearance for the Oklahoma football program. The Sooners, of course, will become part of the SEC after this season.
This will be a much different Big 12 preseason show-and-tell gathering with four newcomer teams making their first appearance along with OU and Texas making their last.
No doubt Big 12 officials will do their best to downplay questions about the conference’s two heavy hitters and redirect the narrative to the new teams, the eight remaining institutions and the future of the new-look Big 12.
This will also be the first go around for newly appointed Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, who officially took over his new duties less than a month after last year’s Big 12 Football Media Days.
The two-day event will feature seven schools (TCU, Houston, Kansas, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Texas and BYU) and the respective coaches’ press conferences on Wednesday, followed by the remaining seven schools, including Oklahoma, on Day 2 on Thursday. OU’s Brent Venables is scheduled to be the last head coach to address the media, at approximately 11:50 on Thursday.
Houston, UCF, Cincinnati and BYU will be participating in their first Big 12 Media Days, but for Houston head coach Dana Holgorsen, it will be a reunion of sorts. Holgorsen was head coach at West Virginia from 2011 to 2018. Before that, he served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Oklahoma State.
There is also a loose connection with UCF. Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel was starting quarterback at UCF from 2019-21, and former Sooner quarterback and later offensive coordinator Josh Heupel was head coach at UCF from 2018-20.
For only the second time since the Big 12 was formed in 1996, every head coach in the conference survived the 2022 season and is back in 2023. The only other time that was the case was in 2018.
It will be interesting to observe what the temperament will be toward the Sooners and Longhorns with this being their final season in the Big 12, Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, for one, had suggested that OU and Texas should be excluded from this year’s Big 12 Media Days because of their imminent departure.
It also will be interesting to hear from Venables and what he has to say about how the Sooners will bounce back from their disappointing 2022 season.
ESPNU and ESPN+ will carry coverage of the coaches’ press conferences and player interviews both days.