SAD NEWS: Oklahoma Sooners announced that Andrel Anthony is Leaving immediately after Facing…..

SAD NEWS: Oklahoma Sooners announced that Andrel Anthony is Leaving immediately after Facing…..

The Oklahoma City Thunder weren’t the only team in the area waking up Monday morning smelling like nothing but victory. The Oklahoma Sooners had their fair share, too.

Let’s take a second to congratulate the Thunder on just did — having an all-time type of season capped off by an NBA Championship, their first ever in franchise history. And, they are the second youngest team to ever win the championship — homegrown talent, a homegrown coach, and an elite defense, one of the best ever, actually.

It’s everything everyone wants the Oklahoma Sooners to get back to on the football field. And, they got a win on Monday in recruiting, showing they are soon headed back to those glory days.

Beau Jandreau is a 3-star linebacker from Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona, part of the 2026 class, where he is considered one of the best in his class at his position. At 6’3″ and 215 lbs, he’s ranked No. 247 nationally, No. 18 at his position, and No. 6 in Arizona by On3. On the field, he’s a hard-hitting defender with 132 tackles, 13 tackles for loss, four sacks, and an interception.

Beau is joining his twin brother, 3-star safety Niko Jandreau. He picked the Sooners over Texas, Oregon, and others, with over 20 offers from schools like USC, Tennessee, and Notre Dame. A visit to Oklahoma during the ChampU BBQ sealed his decision, drawn to the team’s tight-knit environment and coaching staff, led by Brent Venables, of course.

This is a huge win for the Sooners, despite the fact that he’s a three-star. The Sooners don’t worry about rankings based on what recruiting sites have to say. They watch the film, talk to the recruits, and come up with whether they feel that person deserves to play at OU.

Now, here’s the worse news for Sooner Nation:

In two years under Venables, things have only gotten worse after the Texas game. An argument could be made that they’ve gotten drastically worse. It’s a small sample size, but there seem to be some identifiable trends for how the Sooners bounce back after their annual emotional midseason showdown with the Longhorns.

In 2022 and 2023, OU’s record is just 7-7 following the Texas game. Before the Texas game, Venables’ teams are 12-3.

So from the empirical evidence Venables’ teams have established so far, unless OU dramatically reverses that trend in 2024 — the worst is very much yet to come.

Venables said he doesn’t use Texas as any kind of measuring stick for where the Oklahoma program is, but maybe he would be wise to start. In that same timeframe, Steve Sarkisian’s team is 11-4 after playing OU, with one of those losses coming in the College Football Playoff.

“Two years ago when we won the Golden Hat, you might have thought we won the Super Bowl,” Sarkisian said. “This year was like, ‘OK, we got the Golden Hat back, but let’s put it in the trophy case and let’s keep grinding, let’s keep going.’ So I think that’s the mentality of our team.”

The bottom line there is that, after a decade of massive underachievement by the coaches who came before him, Sarkisian has built something tangible in Austin, and now he’s got the No. 1-ranked team in the country that certainly looks playoff-bound once more.

In their first year in the Southeastern Conference, it’s Texas who’s getting all the flowers for having the league’s (and maybe the nation’s) most complete team, while OU has maybe the worst offense in all of college football.

The Sooners hadn’t lost to OSU and KU in the same season in almost a hundred years. But here they are.

OU did get right against West Virginia, but then went on the road again to Provo, UT, and needed a game-saving pick six from Billy Bowman and some fourth-quarter passing heroics fromJackson Arnold to hold off BYU.

Finishing the season with a comfortable but not entirely stress-free (69-45) home win over TCU sent the Sooners into December on an odd vibe.

Then, after the offensive coordinator and the quarterback and a bunch of other players opted out of the Alamo Bowl, OU blew a fourth-quarter lead and lost by double digits to Arizona.