Why Is Brent Venables Getting a Pass on His AWFUL Record Against Texas?

There are plenty of fair complaints about Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables right now, and most of them start on offense. The line has been inconsistent. The run game has been a problem. The quarterback play has been too messy.

All of that belongs in the conversation.

What does not belong in the background is the rivalry record.

Venables is 1-1 against Oklahoma State, 1-3 against Texas, 1-1 against Missouri, and 1-0 against Nebraska. That is 4-5 against the programs Oklahoma measures itself against.

Unless something unexpected happens in Dallas this week, that mark is likely headed in the wrong direction again.

The Sooners are 7.5-point underdogs to No. 1 Texas, and another loss would drop Venables to 1-4 against the Longhorns and 4-6 overall against his core rivals.

At some point, people have to take the kid gloves off of Venables, and stop treating that like a minor subplot.

Why has this been softer in the public conversation than the offensive issues? Maybe because the defense has kept Oklahoma alive enough times to blur the bigger picture. Maybe because the roster transitions and SEC move gave everybody a built-in patience window. Or maybe because it is easier to argue about play callers and quarterbacks than admit the simplest standard is not being met.

Oklahoma is supposed to beat its rivals more often than not. Especially Texas.

That standard is not new, and it is not unique.

Ryan Day took real heat at Ohio State after losing four straight to Michigan from 2021 through 2024. The pressure was heavier, louder, and more constant than anything Venables has faced for the same kind of failure. Then Day’s team used that heat, responded, and eventually won a national championship.

The lesson was not that pressure is unfair. The lesson was that pressure is part of these jobs. If the rivalry standard matters, the coach should feel it.

The same should be true in Norman.

A loss to Texas this week would leave Venables with a 20 percent win rate against Oklahoma’s biggest rival.

Ask the fan base a direct question: when has that ever been acceptable here?

When has a 40 percent mark against rivals been something a blue-blood program is supposed to shrug off while it waits on the offense to mature? Oklahoma can talk about culture, development, and defensive identity all it wants. The rivalry board is still sitting there in plain sight.

Texas having a money advantage does not wipe that away. Almost everybody is chasing somebody financially in modern college football. That does not mean Oklahoma should accept being non-competitive in the game that still defines so much of the brand.

This is a proud program with a better historical footprint than Texas, and for a long stretch it played like it. Under Bob Stoops and Lincoln Riley, Oklahoma went a combined 17-8 against the Longhorns. Stoops was 12-7. Riley was 5-1. That is the recent memory of what the standard looks like when the program is healthy.

This is not about demanding a national championship every year. That is not the world anymore. It is about the floor.

A successful Oklahoma program competes for conference titles, stays in the championship conversation, and beats its rivals. If you cannot do the third one with any consistency, the rest of the résumé starts to sound incomplete.

That is why this week matters beyond the usual Red River noise. Another loss to Texas should not be filed away as one more tough SEC result. It should raise the temperature. It should put more pressure on Venables, not less.

Pressure is not the enemy in jobs like this. Soft expectations are.

Venables may still turn the bigger program trajectory around. He may still get the offense functional enough to change the way these games feel. None of that changes the present.

He has not beaten Texas enough. He has not beaten the rivalry slate enough. And if Oklahoma walks out of Dallas on the wrong side again, that record should finally get the same level of anger that the offensive tape already gets.