Is Nebraska a cautionary tale for Oklahoma and its move to SEC?
AS OKLAHOMA ATHLETIC director Joe Castiglione drove to church the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving in 2021, he received the most stunning phone call of his professional career. Lincoln Riley was on the other line. Out of nowhere, the Sooners coach told Castiglione he was considering leaving for USC.
Castiglione never made it to church. Two hours later, in a meeting with Castiglione and OU president Joseph Harroz Jr., Riley made it clear he had already decided to bolt for Los Angeles.
Earlier that summer, OU and Texas, just as stunningly, announced they would exit the Big 12 together and join the SEC. Over the following four months, and even then in their final meeting, Castiglione said Riley had never expressed any reservations about OU’s impending move to the SEC. Riley has never used that as a reason for going to USC, either.
Still, Riley’s unexpected departure sowed a narrative that he didn’t believe in OU’s ability to compete where “It Just Means More.” Pundits and opposing fan bases since have piled on with skepticism, as the Sooners prepared for their SEC debut. One national radio host recently suggested that the Sooners could go the way of Nebraska — and completely disappear as a power on the way to irrelevance in the SEC.
“There are underlying tones about the move we’ve made, for whatever reason,” said Castiglione, OU’s athletic director since 1998. “It pisses you off. … We just take it as fuel.”
Since the turn of the millennium, no football program has won more games than the Sooners. OU captured the 2000 national championship, played for it again in 2003, 2004 and 2008 and advanced to the playoff in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Along the way, the Sooners won 14 Big 12 titles; the entire rest of the league combined for only two more.
But OU, which opens the season Friday against Temple (7 p.m. ET, ESPN), is set to face what could be the toughest regular-season slate in program history. Its inaugural SEC campaign features six preseason top 15 opponents — including No. 11 Missouri, No. 5 Alabama and No. 13 LSU consecutively to close the year.
Will such a rise in competition prove the doubters right and transform the Sooners from conference contender to conference afterthought?
Or, can OU turn its SEC membership into an asset — and emerge as strong as ever?
The early signs out of Norman suggest the latter to be possible. The Sooners have set a fundraising record. They’ve already nearly doubled their football support staff. But, most crucially, they’ve surged on the recruiting trail, especially along the offensive and defensive lines, where SEC titles are determined.
“Oklahoma isn’t intimidated as a football program,” said coach Brent Venables, who replaced Riley three years ago. “We’re running towards the SEC.”
TOM OSBORNE DIDN’T think it was possible for Nebraska to suffer one losing season, much less seven in a row.
After years in Lincoln as an assistant under Bob Devaney, he took over for him as head coach in 1973. Over the years, the Big Red Rivalry between OU and Nebraska usually decided the Big Eight title and a coveted spot in the Orange Bowl. The legendary Osborne eventually led the Cornhuskers to three national titles in the 1990s before retiring in 1997. A decade later, he became Nebraska’s athletic director and helped guide Nebraska’s move from the Big 12 to the Big Ten.
“At the time, the South Division of the Big 12 had agreed in principle to join the Pac-12. And we hadn’t known anything about it,” said Osborne, now 87. “We knew Colorado was trying to leave. We knew that Missouri was trying to leave. We were looking at the fact that, well, we’re going to be sitting here on an island. We felt the Big Ten represented stability and we didn’t like the fragmentation of what appeared to be the Big 12. That’s why we left. We had a lot of connection to Big 12 schools and didn’t particularly want to leave them, but we just felt like things weren’t holding together very well.”
OU and Texas backed out and never went to the Pac-12. But in 2011, Nebraska officially joined the Big Ten. Two years later, Osborne stepped down as athletic director.
The Huskers seemed positioned to be a perennial contender alongside Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State. Then-coach Bo Pelini won nine or more games in Nebraska’s first four seasons in the Big Ten.
But according to Nebraska’s then-lofty standards, that wasn’t good enough. After the 2014 regular season, Nebraska fired Pelini. The Huskers have enjoyed just one winning season since.
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