Oklahoma coach Brent Venables has been under fire for the Sooners' performance during their 23-6 Week 7 loss to the Texas Longhorns in the Red River Rivalry game. Despite playing quarterback John Mateer just 17 days after his hand surgery, the Sooners could not muster a touchdown in the epic SEC clash. During his weekly news conference ahead of the Sooners' clash against the South Carolina Gamecocks in Week 8, Venables took a shot at the Big 12 Conference's competitiveness, relative to the SEC. “This isn’t the old Big 12 days where Oklahoma destroys everybody every single week except one game of the year,” Venables said.The official Big 12 conference immediately aimed a jab at the Sooners' coach on X."Coach Venables lost eight Conference games in his two seasons in the Big 12."After taking the Oklahoma head coaching job in 2022, Brent Venables went 16-10 overall and 10-8 in Big 12 play before the Sooners departed for the SEC in 2024. Analyst blasts Brent Venables for rivalry game decisionBrent Venables has been outscored by 93 points in four Red River Rivalry games against the Texas Longhorns and he fell to a 1-3 record in the clash during his four-year tenure at Oklahoma. After only managing 256 total yards on Saturday against the Longhorns, Venables made the controversial decision to start quarterback John Mateer against Texas, despite having surgery on his hand just 17 days prior. During Sunday's segment of the "Matt Barrie Show," ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum blasted Venables for the decision (20:18). "It was a terrible decision by Brent Venables to play John Mateer,” Finebaum said. “I didn’t like it going in, because here is the reason why it was such a bad decision: They had to know Mateer was going to be severely limited. So, they did two terrible things. They put him in harm’s way, which he shouldn’t have been in."Secondly, they cost themselves a great argument to the CFP if they ended up going 9-3, by saying, ‘Hey, listen, our biggest game of the year, we didn’t have our best player.' It's a similar argument that FSU did not win on but they might have won on. And they got nothing out of it. I hope Mateer is okay, but Michael Hawkins couldn't have been any worse.”Brent Venables led the Oklahoma Sooners to a 6-7 record last season and his record stands at 5-1 this season. The Sooners have games against five ranked sides still to come before the end of the season.