No tradition is safe in college football today, even ones that might actually help.
Brent Venables on Monday night announced during his first weekly coach's show of the 2026 season that Oklahoma will celebrate Senior Day earlier this year when the Sooners host New Mexico on Sept. 19, which is Week 3 of the season. Traditionally, across all sports at all levels, seniors are celebrated right before the final home game of the season since it's usually their last time playing in front of their home crowd.
Venables said this was a decision his team captains prompted to avoid a distraction for what would have been a much more important SEC game with likely College Football Playoff implications against Texas A&M on Nov. 21, which is when Senior Day was originally scheduled for. There's respect to the seniors for wanting to focus on the task at hand, but this might have been a decision that was overthought. There's likely little impact, if any, from the pregame ceremony, but if there is, results say it was actually an advantage.
“I talked to the leadership council about Senior Day, and sometimes that can be a -- as a competitor, there’s a routine that you go through in the locker room on game day, and every single week it's really important," Venables said. "They asked if we could, instead of waiting until the very end, maybe we could do it early in the year, so we just tried to find a window that would fit, and we needed a little of time to be able to let families know and get some of the logistical things in line and just honor them.
"This is their senior year. We're gonna honor them the whole year. It's a big deal to be a senior, especially in this day and age. So they decided to do it on the New Mexico weekend, here in a couple of weeks."
Brent Venables tends to find success on Senior Day with some massive wins
The leadership council is made up of nine team captions, including fifth-year seniors John Mateer and Jake Maikkula, and sixth-year Owen Heinecke. Peyton Brown and Taylor Wein are also listed as seniors, but now have one more year of eligibility left after this season because of the NCAA's new 5-in-5 rule that gives all athletes five seasons to compete while essentially erasing redshirts.
Friday night's season opener against UTEP would apparently be too soon to arrange Senior Day. Ohio State announced earlier this offseason that the Buckeyes will host their Senior Day before their season opener against Ball State on Saturday. It was initially scheduled for when they played Michigan, their biggest rival.
After hosting UTEP, the Sooners travel to play Michigan themselves before returning to welcome New Mexico. They'll then be away from Norman for three weeks between a road game at Georgia, a bye week and the Red River Rivalry against Texas in Dallas. The rest of their home games are then all SEC matchups against Kentucky, South Carolina, Ole Miss and Texas A&M.
If the Sooners' ultimate goal was to assure Senior Day didn't result in a loss because of an unnecessary distraction, then the New Mexico game was the obvious choice, if not the opener against UTEP. That Week 3 matchup was originally set to be OU's "Stripe The Stadium" game. It's unknown if that and Senior Day will just swap dates.
In the end, it's unlikely a pregame ceremony would actually alter the outcome of a game. It has been a tradition for years, so if it was truly detrimental, teams would have made a change long ago. There's also no arguing against the pregame festivities getting in the way if the team itself claims it does.
There's also an argument that added emotion could actually benefit the home team, though, especially when it's the Sooners inside Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Coincidence or not, results prove an advantage for the Sooners.
Venables' teams are 4-0 in Senior Day games during his time leading the Sooners. That includes his only Bedlam win in 2022, hanging 69 points on TCU in 2023, a miracle upset over Alabama in 2025 and beating LSU to clinch a spot in the CFP last year. The Sooners haven't just notched victories to honor their seniors, but monumental ones.
Like most decisions made in college sports today, there was either too much thought or not nearly enough in this one, and it might need some rethinking if wins is what the Sooners really want.
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