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NORMAN \u2014 Saturday\u2019s Senior Day festivities will be special for Oklahoma coach Brent Venables<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n He\u2019s four quarters away from taking the Sooners back to the College Football Playoffs for the first time as a head coach, and the program will be honoring the first class of seniors who spent their entire time at OU with Venables.\u00a0<\/p>\n Guys like defensive tackle Gracen Halton<\/strong>, defensive end R Mason Thomas <\/strong>and tight end Jaren Kanak<\/strong> will play their last regular season game at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium after enduring many ups and downs over the last four years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJust a group of guys, there\u2019s no quit in them,\u201d Venables said on Tuesday. \u201cGroup of guys that are incredibly close. They\u2019re family. Their families are your family. You\u2019ve gone through life the last four years with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat an honor it is, incredible men that they\u2019ve become through a lot of intentional effort and maturity.\u201d<\/p>\n This crop of seniors has battled through a pair of 6-7 seasons, but they\u2019ve built a foundation for the Sooners to grow into 2026 and beyond under Venables.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a nucleus of young guys in our locker room that did not flinch (last year),\u201d Venables said. \u201cI know I said that several times. It doesn\u2019t resonate with people when you\u2019re not having success, and I get that. But I, myself and the rest of the staff saw the things that were a precursor to what we\u2019re seeing right now. Everybody sees the success, but they don\u2019t see what I\u2019m talking about behind closed doors and all the sacrifice, discipline, consistency, messaging, leadership moments.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, the seniors are four quarters away from taking OU to its first 12-team College Football Playoff.\u00a0<\/p>\n And the Sooners might not be done at home, either.\u00a0<\/p>\n Oklahoma held steady at No. 8 in Tuesday\u2019s CFP rankings, which puts the program in position to host a game in the first round of the playoff.\u00a0<\/p>\n If the rankings froze today, the Sooners would host No. 9 Notre Dame, and both teams are favored to win this weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n With so much at stake, OU will quickly shift into business mode at 2:30 p.m. against LSU.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Venables hopes to enjoy a special moment with his seniors before kickoff.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJust have great appreciation,\u201d Venables said. \u201cThere\u2019s a football piece, a leadership piece, the quality of humans that they are. So all of those things, I\u2019ve got a lot of admiration and respect and appreciation for them. Saturday\u2019s another game. For me, my message to everybody else that\u2019s in the locker room with \u2018em, is doing their part to help these guys have an amazing, last regular season finale game experience. I think that\u2019s really important.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n NORMAN \u2014 Saturday\u2019s Senior Day festivities will be special for Oklahoma coach Brent Venables.\u00a0 He\u2019s four quarters away from taking the Sooners back to the College Football Playoffs for the first time as a head coach, and the program will be honoring the first class of seniors who spent their entire time at OU with … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Oklahomas-Senior-Day-Will-be-Special-for-Brent-Venables.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11595,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11593\/revisions\/11595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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