This Year Hasn't Gone to Plan, But Oklahoma's Remaining Seniors Take Pride in Past, Future

LUBBOCK, TX — Oklahoma has arrived — not only at Jones AT&T Stadium, but at this juncture of the college football season — with little more than a strong brand, a lot of pride and an eye on the future.

The Sooners are 6-5 and not happy about how the last three months have unfolded.

After Saturday, the regular season is over. Will OU be 6-6 when they fly back to Norman tonight, or will they be 7-5? Will pride be enough to survive what’s sure to be an intense and probably odd game against Texas Tech? Or did their season peak last week with their 28-13 victory over Oklahoma State?

“It's not the year that I foresaw for us,” said senior tight end Brayden Willis. “None of us thought — we expected much, much greater for ourselves.”

When Willis signed with the Sooners in 2018, he was one of 24 newcomers who foresaw a bright future — a championship future. 

It was Lincoln Riley's first full recruiting class.

OU was coming off a 2017 season in which they should have played Alabama for the national championship but instead blew a big lead to Georgia in the Rose Bowl. The following December, OU actually would play the Crimson Tide in the College Football Playoff, albeit in a one-sided semifinal game in Miami. The next year, the slippage continued as the Sooners were blown out by LSU in Atlanta.

Since then, the program has trended slightly downward — slightly until 2022, when Riley checked out and Brent Venables’ first season ultimately dropped off a cliff.

Now Willis is one of just five guys on the roster left from that class, along with offensive lineman Brey Walker, defensive lineman Jalen Redmond, linebacker DaShaun White and defensive lineman Jordan Kelley.

White said after the Bedlam game that the season has “been rough” and the players often “haven’t been able to sort of see the fruits of our labor.”

From signing with what many feel could have been a national championship team to finishing with a team that will be locked in a fight to avoid being 6-6 is quite the drop for one recruiting class. It’s one reason last week’s Senior Night activities included so many raw emotions.

“They were pretty high,” White said last Saturday night. “I’ve kind of been emotional a little bit for a few weeks now. It's really starting to set in that we walk in here, it's going to be Monday and the board is gonna say five days left or five days of practices left this season. It just kind of continues to settle in how surreal it is that this is coming to an end. Such a big, exciting chapter of my life is coming to a close.”

If the Sooners beat Texas Tech, they’ll clinch a winning record for the 24th consecutive season — second nationally to Georgia’s 26. It’s already their 24th straight season in a bowl game. That, some players said, was a relief.

“It feels great,” said Kelley. “Throughout the ups and downs, we had a lot of downs. We could've just stayed down and said the season was over, but we decided to keep going and keep fighting. I'm just excited to earn an extra game with my guys.”

Willis, however, said getting to six wins was not a relief. Not for this program.

“Not at all,” Willis said. “Guys are still hungry After last week, you know, it's good to get a win, but we're ready to get back after it. We haven't had the year that we wanted to have but knowing that we're trying to make it the best year that we can still possibly have.”

Diminished as this senior class may be, they say they’re proud of what they’ve accomplished — and what they’ve set in motion.

“I will have pride — and I do have pride — knowing that I am the, kind of, start, the jumpstart of the coach Venables era. And I haven't been able to kind of reap the fruits of my labor right now. But I know in the future, when they go and they win the title and the natty, I’ll know I had a hand in that and that I was kind of the start of that era.

“So, I take tremendous pride in finishing it the right way. To finish the season off and propel them into the next era.”