It's been 27 years since Texas pulled off a Red River Rivalry trifecta against Oklahoma

The quickest way for a head football coach at either Oklahoma or Texas to lose his job is to lose too many times to the other school.

The Four Horsemen of Oklahoma football head coaches (some might call them the "Killer B's") -- Bennie Owen, Bud Wilkinson, Barry Switzer, and Bob Stoops -- all have .500 or better records against the Sooners' chief rival. Stoops was the best of the four in games against Texas, fashioning an 11-5 record in his 18 seasons as the Oklahoma head coach.

This year will be Brent Venables' fifth time as head coach going against the hated Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl on the second weekend in October. He is just 1-3 in those contests, and the three losses don't qualify as close encounters. The Sooners have been outscored in the three losses by a whopping margin of 106-9. The one Oklahoma win over Texas during Venables' head-coaching reign came in 2023, and it required some late Sooner Magic heroics to pull it off.

Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel orchestrated a five-play, 75-yard scoring drive in just under a minute's time, capped off by a three-yard touchdown pass from Gabriel to Nic Anderson with 15 seconds remaining in the game.

Losing to Texas 3 straight times is rare for Sooners

Venables is in danger of losing to Texas for a third straight year, which would place him in exclusive company and mark the first time in 27 years that Oklahoma has lost three consecutive games to the Longhorns. Over that same time period, the Sooners have a three-game, four-game, and five-game win streak in the rivalry series with Texas. Chuck Fairbanks and Gary Gibbs are the only Oklahoma coaches who have lost as many as three games in a row to the Longhorns.

Venables' .250 winning percentage against Texas is the third worst of any Oklahoma head coach who has coached against the Longhorns in at least five Red River Rivalry games. Only Dewey Luster, who lost all five of his rivalry games vs. Texas from 1941 through 1945, and Gary Gibbs (1-5, .167, between 1989 and 1994) have worse winning percentages than Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry series.

Venables had much better success against Texas while serving as defensive coordinator under Stoops for 13 seasons (1999-2011). Oklahoma was 8-5 against the Longhorns (.615) during that time.

Stoops' successor, Lincoln Riley, owns the best record (5-1) and winning percentage (.833) of any Sooner head coach who faced Texas at least five times. If you include the two seasons (2015 and 2016) that Riley was the offensive coordinator before being elevated to head coach, Oklahoma was 6-2 against the Longhorns while he was in Norman. His only loss to Texas as the OU head coach was in 2018, when Cameron Dicker of Texas kicked a 40-yard, game-winning field goal with nine seconds remaining in the game to give the Longhorns a 48-45 victory.

Twice in the 121-game Red River Rivalry history, Texas has strung together win streaks of as many as eight games. The Sooners have two five-game win streaks in the series: 1971-75 under the combination of Fairbanks and Switzer, and 2000-04 on Stoops' watch

Saturday's OU-Texas game in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas is the 122nd edition of the Red River Rivalry. Texas leads the overall series with a record of 65-51-5. Over the last 30 seasons, however, Oklahoma owns an 18-13 advantage over its archrival.

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