Jackson Arnold’s first swim through a college football season as a starter wasn’t set up for success. Down his top four, then top five, then top six wide receivers throughout the 2024 season didn’t help an inexperienced quarterback playing behind an inconsistent offensive line that battled injuries of their own all season long.

Not a recipe for growth and development for a young quarterback. And yet Arnold did show growth over the second half of the season. It wasn’t perfect or even clean, as Arnold fumbled the ball in the late stages of the loss to Missouri. However, it was improved from the player who was benched for turning the ball over three times in the first half against Tennessee.

So, as many ponder Oklahoma’s future on the offensive side of the ball, Arnold isn’t ready to make any decisions yet. He’s simply going to get back to work.

“I’m going to take a break this week,” Arnold said postgame via The Oklahoman, “and just chill out and stay in the weight room, watch film over this past year and just improve on getting myself better.”

As Oklahoma begins preparation for their bowl destination and attempts to stay ready, Arnold will let the chips fall where they may. But as things stand right now, he foresees a scenario where he’s at the University of Oklahoma.

“Only God knows what’ll happen in the future,” Arnold said. “And I’m just, this next week, just meet the OC. See who we hire and take it day by day. But there’s nothing making me want to leave or nothing making me waver from being here.”

As Brent Venables indicated in his postgame press conference, the Sooners will make an offensive coordinator hire in short order. It’s just a matter of time at this point. And from there, we’ll find out the future of Oklahoma’s starting quarterback.

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BATON ROUGE, LA — Oklahoma’s football season ended on Saturday night in the bayou with a quick look at the past and a long look at the future.

After OU ended the year with a 37-17 loss at LSU — putting a miserable finish on a miserable 6-6 season — head coach Brent Venables was asked to examine the full scope of the program and assess where and how it can get better.

First and foremost, Venables said, is hiring a new offensive coordinator.

“Obviously we’re gonna, in the next few days or so, we’ll hire a new coach on offense and kind of get that sorted out,” Venables said. “I think that’s important as well. And then we have a signing day in a few days (Wednesday), and the transfer portal is going to open up (the following week), and it’ll be — we’ll be like about everybody in the country, where there’s going to be some real change.

“And some of it is by design, and some of it will be a surprise. That’s just, that’s the world we live in. It’s open-ended free agency. So we’ve been working for this moment, for the last several months, in anticipation of the signing period and the transfer portal opening up — and have a good evaluation of where we’re at.” 

Venables’ bottom line: Oklahoma needs to get better  — a lot better — and will have several avenues by which to accomplish that.

“That’s been a constant evaluation during the course of the season to identify the places from a roster standpoint that we need to improve and get better as well in the next seven days,” he said.

It’s expected that Venables will announce his offensive coordinator possibly as early as Sunday, though Monday fits more closely with the logistics.

But there will be plenty of talking with recruits about his decision — no doubt he’ll let them know who he’s chosen ahead of Wednesday — and then their signing day will continue the immediate offensive rebuild.

“There’s a lot of careful planning that goes into the things talked about,” Venables said. “We’ve worked over, you know, for almost two years with the signing class, and really incredibly excited about the guys going to sign this next week, and feel like they’ll be able to to have great opportunity to come in and help make us better right away. 

“For the last, you know, couple of months, been working on finding the right fit for us from a coaching standpoint, and feel that we’re going to be in a great position, a strong position, to make us better with that higher so feel really good about that.” 

Venables also said he will not be surprised as current players on this year’s roster work their way into his office to let him know about their decision to enter the transfer portal or stay. It may seem like a tight window with the season ending on Saturday and the portal officially opening a week and a half later, but Venables doesn’t see it that way.

“I don’t think it’s a tight window for the transfers. Actually, they still got a big window,” he said. “But we’ve been planning for this for last several months, so I won’t be surprised with anything — knowing that there are going to be a few surprises. I expect there to be, and I’m okay with that.” 

Venables said he was proud of the improvement the players on this year’s team showed throughout the season, though he acknowledged that improvement was not linear.

Such as throttling Alabama last week in Norman, but losing to both Missouri and LSU — who lost to the Crimson Tide by a combined score of 76-13.

Venables often talks about handling success — and this squad clearly did not handle the success of beating Alabama very well at all. Venables did add, however, that he didn’t see Saturday’s uneven performance coming during the Sooners’ week of practice.

“It was really good,” he said. “I told them, ‘I wish I could say I told you so, like, we had crappy practices, we didn’t put in the extra time, or we weren’t invested, we didn’t have a passion (and) intensity about us all week, or even today,” Venables said. “But that wasn’t it. I think that would be just too easy to blame it on that. I thought our guys — our leadership — did a great job, our coaches, did a really good job, and we just couldn’t put it together tonight.”

OU concludes its first season in the SEC with a 2-6 record — its worst in conference play, by winning percentage, since 1931.

Still, Venables sounds resolute — both about this squad making immediate strides before a bowl game (that’ll be announced a week from Sunday) as well as jumping into a brighter future. 

“I do know, without question, that there’s a bunch of guys on both sides of the ball that made improvement here this back half of the season,” he said. “We’ve talked about that a lot, and so continue to do those things. 

“We’ll be practicing for the next several weeks, and with the idea that we’re going to improve the football team fundamentally through hard work. That’s where the progress is going to come from: putting your head down and going right back to work, doing the things that we need to do in order to improve just a daily focus of getting better.

“Again, a lot to be disappointed (about) at the end of the day. Being disappointed in being (6-6) that’s, you know, far below our standards. 

“And so we got a lot of work to do, and I got a lot of — once we get some of these big decisions and moments and things on our on our schedule here out of the way — you know, go back and look at every area of our program where we need to be better.”

Oklahoma State just finished its worst season in Mike Gundy’s career, and that poses questions about his future.

OSU has had the same coach for the past 20 seasons and seen the most successful stretch in school history by a significant margin. Gundy’s Cowboys had 18 straight winning seasons and bowl appearances from 2006-23. 

With that streak over and a nine-game losing streak still alive entering the offseason, making a head coaching change is at least an option. The 52-0 loss to Colorado will certainly not sit well with anyone as the offseason begins.

While some around and outside the program have felt a coaching change has been needed for some time, that change would have to come from a firing. OSU’s coach confirmed he wasn’t considering retirement and planned to be back for 2025 at a recent press conference.

With the ever-changing landscape of college football, NIL and the transfer portal, OSU would need to act quickly if it intends to begin a coaching search. With so many unexpected problems arising in such a short amount of time, Gundy might be safe simply out of convenience.

OSU entered the season as a contender for the Big 12 title and College Football Playoff but was out of those discussions before October. Still, the team entering the season in those discussions kept Gundy’s job security out of the question before the season.

He won’t enter next season with the same luxury.

Despite his struggles this season and loads of uncertainty surrounding OSU’s future, Gundy’s recent success gives him the benefit of the doubt. Entering the season, OSU had made two of the past three Big 12 Championship games and was coming off of a 10-win season, the eighth in Gundy’s tenure.

Gundy won’t have a chance to make up for this season for another nine months, but he should be able to sleep well without worrying about his employment status in the meantime. However, another poor season in 2025, and the Cowboys might not have a choice but to begin their first coaching search in over 20 years.

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