“Naturally, any time you come out of a bye week, if we do it right, we should be healthier than we were going into the bye week.”
The Monday statement from Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian should be a truism across college football. And yet, up across the Red River in Norman, things are different.
After seven players were listed on the final SEC-mandated injury report for the Oklahoma Sooners prior to the team’s 41-13 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs in Athens in Week 4, the initial player availability
report on Wednesday somehow included 13 players even though Brent Venables’ program was also coming off a bye week.
Defensive lineman David Stone and linebacker Kip Lewis both came off the injury report between the initial release two weeks ago and the first pre-Cotton Bowl report, but the new additions include running back Xavier Robinson (out), defensive back Jacobe Johnson (out), tight end Trynae Washington (doubtful), offensive linemen Fred Hinton (doubtful), offensive lineman Eddy Pierre-Louis (questionable), tight end Jack Van Dorselaer (questionable), and linebacker Owen Heinecke (probable), more players than the Longhorns listed on their entire injury report on Wednesday.
As Sooner Scoop’s Eddie Radosevich wrote, “The laundry list of injuries each week is tough to stomach.”
It’s also been a continuous issue for the Sooners under Venables, especially in the Red River Rivalry — at some point, it’s not just bad injury luck, there’s something wrong with the way that Venables is managing his program. The problem could be with the strength and conditioning program or with how much contact is happening in practice.
Is this what they’re doing in Norman?
Even close observers of the program are left asking for more transparency and public accountability.
In an apparent nod to the need for change, strength and conditioning coach Jerry Schmidt, a five-time national champion at Notre Dame, Florida, and Oklahoma, moved into a new role in the offseason as James Dobson, on staff since 2022, took over for Schmidt.
A legendary hard ass and notably old-school coach, Schmidt spent 19 years leading the strength and conditioning program for Bob Stoops, honing and hardening the Sooner teams that were frequently tougher and more physical than the Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl during the Mack Brown era.
But the transition from Schmidt to Dobson clearly hasn’t solved the underlying issues, leaving OU heading to Dallas without getting much benefit from the bye week in terms of improved physical health.
