Berry Tramel

Tulsa World Sports Columnist

NORMAN — College football’s marketing machine, of which I guess I am a member and maybe you are, too, unless you’ve avoided the morass of social media, spent nine months billing the Oklahoma-Auburn football game as a referendum on coaches Brent Venables and Hugh Freeze.

Either Venables or Freeze was headed for a scathing indictment.

Jackson Arnold was to be the chief witness, of course, for the court case, which commences Saturday at OU. Arnold was a Sooner in 2024, he’s a Tiger in 2025, and one or the other of these would walk off Owen Field with their reputation impugned.

Of course, the football teams got in the way of that glorious plot. Auburn beat Baylor, and OU beat Michigan, and now Sooners-Tigers is one of just three top-25 matches on

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