What are those who said Oklahoma wasn't ready to compete in the SEC saying now?

One year after going 6-7 in its inaugural season in the Southeastern Conference, Oklahoma finished off the 2025 regular season registering its 10th win on Saturday with a 17-13 victory over LSU.

Although the Sooners' 10 overall wins and 6-2 conference record isn't good enough to get them into the SEC Championship Game, they are one of five SEC teams whose body of work this season is expected to reward them with a coveted spot in the College Football Playoff.

Oklahoma won 10 or more games 19 times, including 14 conference championships, in 28 years as a member of the Big 12, a league whose identity is best associated with spread formations and wide-open, high-scoring offenses and with little or no attention to defense. Big 12 teams dared you to outscore them.

Sooner fans will not forget how critical the media was of the Oklahoma football program when it was first announced that OU and Texas would leave the Big 12 to go play with the big boys in the SEC.

Few believed Sooners would experience same success in the SEC

The general belief among those who cover and closely follow college football was that Texas, having produced a 12-2 record and won the Big 12 championship in 2023, the final year for both the Sooners and Longhorns in that conference, was better built to compete with the best in the SEC than Oklahoma, which had been the dominant force for most of its time in the Big 12. The next closest to OU's 14 Big 12 titles was Texas with four.

When Brent Venables arrived on the scene to replace Lincoln Riley, the new Oklahoma head coach inherited a Sooner team whose once prolific offense was in serious decline and a defense that was one of the worst in the country. Venables had two years to pump new life into the program and get the Sooners ready to compete in a conference that self-proclaims, "It just means more."

The 2022 season, the first under Venables, didn't go all that well. Oklahoma finished with a 6-7 record, its first losing season since 1998. The skeptics only grew after the disappointing 2022 season, with many suggesting the Sooners could go the way of Nebraska and completely disappear as a national power on the way to irrelevance in the SEC.

Oklahoma rebounded in Venables' second year. The Sooners started out winning their first seven games, but lost three of the next six to end the year at 10-3.

But when the 2024 schedule came out revealing Oklahoma's SEC schedule, which included home-and-home games for the next two seasons with the likes of Alabama, Tennessee and LSU, and was widely viewed as one of the most difficult schedules in college football, it only added more fuel to the fire for the doom-and-gloomers who were convinced the Sooners were about to go from conference contenders to conference afterthoughts.

Texas experienced success right from the start after joining the SEC. Things weren't nearly as smooth for the newbie Sooners. Oklahoma began the 2024 season 4-1, but after a 34-3 drubbing by 5-0 Texas, former Alabama head coach Nick Saban said on an ESPN College GameDay broadcast, "Sark (Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian) built this Texas team as an SEC team. Oklahoma's not built that way. But Texas is, and that's why they can compete in this league."

Multiple injuries at wide receiver and on the offensive line seriously plagued the OU offense in the Sooners' debut season in the SEC, but the defense, under Venables' mastery, showed marked improvement. OU finished the season at 6-7, but with a defense that was beginning to look like an SEC defense. The Sooners' 2024 defense ranked 29th nationally in scoring defense and 19th in total defense.

After the 2024 season, Oklahoma made major chances to improve the offense, bringing in Ben Arbuckle from Washington State as the new offensive coordinator, along with quarterback John Mateer, who followed his OC to Oklahoma. The Sooners filled critical areas of need on both offense and defense with a highly regarded 2025 recruiting class and additional pieces from the Transfer Portal.

Circling back to 2023-24, you'll recall that it was the absence of a physical, punishing defense that most pundits and analysts believed would prevent Oklahoma from competing at a contending level in the SEC. And here we are. Heading into the 2025 postseason, the Sooners are the top defense in the SEC and arguably the best in the county. And largely because of that elite defense, Oklahoma is one of the top teams in the SEC this season and finds itself in contention for a national championship.

Oklahoma ranks third in the country this season in rushing yards allowed ( 81.4 per game) seventh in scoring defense (13.9) and ninth in total defense (273.6).

Admittedly, the Sooner offense has not been as productive or consistent as expected, but is definitely better than last year, and the results speak for themselves. Let's face it, you don't make it through a difficult gauntlet of games at Tennessee, at Alabama, Missouri and LSU, four of the better teams in the SEC, with four consecutive wins if you're not ready to compete in that conference.

Venables definitely would like to see more offensive/defensive balance and complementary football, but if defense wins championships, as they like to say, Oklahoma seems to be building and positioning itself for future success and to compete with the best in the SEC.