Speaking about the mentality he expects to see from his team following a Week 7 loss to Texas on Tuesday, Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables invoked the Sooners' former conference.
An hour later, the Big 12 clapped back.
No. 14 Oklahoma is regrouping this week after suffering its first loss of the season on Saturday, a deflating 23-6 Red River Rivalry defeat to the Longhorns.
Venables, who holds a 1-3 record against the Longhorns, often has spoken about the SEC being a "one-possession league" since the Sooners joined the conference ahead of the 2024 season. On Tuesday, before Oklahoma's Week 8 trip to South Carolina (12:45 p.m. EST on Saturday, SEC Network), Venables was asked by a reporter if the Sooners still need to learn how to win close games in the SEC or simply perform better to avoid playing in them.
Across a two-plus-minute response, Venables explained the importance of executing on offense, defense and special teams; challenging his players to "normalize the struggle of game day"; and managing the heightened competition of the SEC, complete with a mention of the Big 12 Conference, Oklahoma's home from 1996 to 2024.
"It's the tough-mindedness that you want your guys to play with -- a level of comfort when things aren't going well or when things are a little harder," Venables said. "I don't want guys to panic. I don't want guys to [say], 'Oh my god, now what do we do?' You're going to get punched back a lot. And this isn't the old Big 12 days where Oklahoma destroys everybody every single week except for one game a year."
As if he anticipated the internet firestorm that would come, Venables promptly attempted to contextualize his reference to the Big 12: "I'm not saying that in any other way other than, man, every week, there's big, long, fast explosive dudes, great staffs, really good quarterback play, tremendous lines of scrimmage, things of that nature," he continued.
That context didn't matter. Little more than an hour after Venables' quote began circulating on social media, the Big 12 official X account fired back with a simple, fact-based response.
Coach Venables lost eight Conference games in his two seasons in the Big 12 https://t.co/O4eLzaJ3lo
— Big 12 Conference (@Big12Conference) October 14, 2025
Indeed, Oklahoma went 10-8 in conference play across the 2022 and 2023 campaigns -- Venables' first two seasons in charge of the program.
That included a 3-6 finish in the league in 2022 with losses to Kansas State, TCU, Texas, Baylor, West Virginia and Texas Tech. A year later, the Sooners saw themselves crash from College Football Playoff contention with defeats at Kansas and Oklahoma State seven days later in the final annual edition of the Bedlam rivalry.
From 2000 to 2021, led by former coaches Bob Stoops and Lincoln Riley, Oklahoma went 153-33 in Big 12 games -- a winning percentage of .823 -- and claimed a league-record 14 conference titles. Venables, of course, played a significant part in that run, too, overseeing the Sooners' defense from 1999 to 2011 and helping lead Oklahoma to its seventh national championship in 2000.
Two seasons into Oklahoma and the Big 12's new realities, the seemingly dormant conference realignment tensions bubbled over again on Tuesday, at least for an afternoon.