Being realistic here, with Texas & Oklahoma coming in,

They will both be fine.

Here’s the thing. Every conference is a grind because the teams in that conference have to play a majority of games vs said teams. Teams build their rosters to get through the conf grind no matter what.

Then you have playoffs. The reason SEC has done great in playoffs is because the other conferences are built differently - the SEC top teams are defense oriented.

I think most would agree with over a month to prepare for playoffs this favors defense over offense. Easier to slow down an offense. OU had some of the most prolific offenses ever and yet had a crappy D. That did them in in playoffs.

Going foward OU is gearing up for defense and brought in Venables and Roof and some other specialty defensive coaches. They will have a much better balance going in.

Once you get past the top 2-4 SEC teams its similar to other conferences where the rest can beat you on any given Saturday but are not top teams.

So in one way I agree it’ll be a grind but in another its already a grind based on conf and how teams are constructed. The biggest adjustment is if due to these big conferences you will play conf games right out of the gate. Way less popcorn states for everyone to start the year and work out kinks. Thats going to be for all teams not just OU.

Conferences go in cycles too, I recall the Big 12 South had the best division in college for a spell.

OU won’t win as much for sure. And the games will be exciting. New venues, new traditions to learn. New rivalries. I look forward to it.

I look at A&M in year one with Manziel that were dominate, year two had 4 loses Manziel’s last year then year three was when it kicked in

Last year everyone was ready to crown Florida champs in the east because they played a close game with Bama.

Can you spell Gasparilla Bowl?

While I have to admit that I thought it likely that Bama would roll Texas, I also know that Texas has the talent, that if they're fired up for a big opponent, they can hang with anybody.

I've seen it far too many times in the Cotton Bowl in October.

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Both have great football history. How many years does it take in the SEC grind to admit " This grind is a lot harder than we thought" ?

Year 3? Thats what I'm thinking.

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There is limited success in conference. In the end, it won't be any different, only the names will have changed. Where they end up in the order remains to be seen, but it's not going to make the grind harder.

The only thing that would make it harder is going from an 8 to a 9 game conference. Which is dumb, but more likely. Still that would be the case even if we didn't add Texas and Oklahoma. It's dumb because again, success in conference is limited. All conference games come out to .500 and it just makes the conferences overall record biased close to .500.

We saw what happened in 2020. SEC teams were extremely under ranked due to records. Then they go into bowl games and you get "top 15" ranked teams losing to .500 SEC teams badly.

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Nobody thinks it's because Texas is that great. It's because Alabama played poorly.

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Oh please....

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Not to mention, without help from the refs Texas isn't even remotely in this game. Blame it on Alabama or whatever, but it was either Alabama being sloppy, or refs being bad.

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This is delusional happy talk.

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They'll never admit it.

See Texas 8&4

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Three things OU does not do.

1) Talk about recruiting champions. That is covered by two teams in Texas

2) Talk a lot about what they are going to do in the future. Again that is covered by the Texas schools

3) Give excuses when we lose. We lose because a team plays better than OU, at least in that game.

Never, ever compare us to the texas schools.

Texas and OU always play well against teams when they get weeks or months to plan for 1 game.

Texas has had Alabama and Oklahoma circled all off-season. Alabama has had every SEC school plus Texas circled all off-season.