Oklahoma fired offensive coordinator Seth Littrell on Sunday after the Sooners’ 35-9 loss to South Carolina on Saturday in Norman.
Littrell has ties to Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel. The Oklahoma native played fullback/running back for the Sooners from 1997 to 2000 and was a co-captain alongside Heupel for Oklahoma’s championship-winning team.
But while quickly Heupel returned to Oklahoma to start his coaching career, Littrell’s path back to Norman was a much more extended route.
Littrell started out as a grad assistant at Kansas for two years before taking assistant coaching positions at Texas Tech, Arizona, Indiana, and North Carolina over the following 10 years. Littrell picked up his first head coaching job with North Texas from 2016 to 2022 before returning to Oklahoma in 2023.
Littrell started with an offensive analyst role with Oklahoma in the 2023 season and was promoted to offensive coordinator and quarterback’s coach for the 2024 season. The Sooners’ offense has sputtered this season, though, despite fairly high expectations.
Quarterback Jackson Arnold was benched during the Tennessee game in favor of freshman quarterback Michael Hawkins, but Arnold did return to the playing field this past weekend against South Carolina. The Sooners currently rank last in the SEC in offensive yards per game, second-to-last in points per game, second-to-last in passing yards per game, and last in rushing yards per game.
“Seth is an all-time great Sooner,” Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said in a statement released on Sunday. “He has a deep love for this university and football program, and has poured his heart and soul into both. Despite that, our performance as an offense this season has not at all lived up to the OU standard and I felt a change was necessary now.”
Oklahoma is now 4-3 on the season and 1-3 in SEC play with losses to Tennessee, Texas, and South Carolina and a win over Auburn. The Sooners still have a gauntlet of a schedule on the table with road games against Ole Miss, Missouri, and LSU and a home game against Alabama.
