SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Seth Littrell has been a lot of places in his career. He played fullback at Oklahoma and was a team captain for the Sooners' 2000 national championship season. His decades-long career spans seven schools, including North Carolina, Indiana, Arizona, Kansas, Texas Tech and North Texas. He's been alongside a lot of great coaches, including Bob Stoops, Mark Mangino, Mike Leach and Mike Stoops.

Heading into 2023, Littrell always knew he wanted to take the year off following a seven-year tenure as the head coach North Texas. He also knew he wanted to return to Oklahoma as a coach. He was eventually hired by Brent Venables as an offensive analyst in the spring, but his mind was set on returning to an offensive coordinator position next season.

In early December, an opportunity came that was the best of both worlds. In the wake of Jeff Lebby's departure, Venables offered Littrell the position of offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.

For Littrell, it's a dream come true to be on the coaching staff at his alma mater.

"For me obviously being born and raised here, my father played here and so that's all I ever knew growing up," Littrell said during the Alamo Bowl press conference on Tuesday. "That was my dream growing up...

"This place obviously means everything to me. I've been trying to get back here for 23 years, and so this is obviously the place I want to be."

Now, he's preparing for his first game as the Sooners' new play caller. That'll be at the Alamo Bowl on Thursday against No. 14 Arizona.

It's been a busy few weeks for Littrell. In addition to assuming a big role in the Sooners' bowl practices, he also helped the team solidify its 2024 recruiting class last week for national signing day. With so much going on, the message from Littrell has been to keep things simple.

"We've got a very hardworking crew," Littrell said. "The great thing about our situation that we have, we have great players, very experienced players that know how to go out and make plays, and so as of right now, it's just keeping it the way we've been doing things. Terminology is not changing, the offense that we're running will stay consistent to what we've done throughout the year, and then we can look up after the season and figure out what we need to do moving forward as adjustments and kind of evolving in how we grow.

"Obviously the way we do things as a coaching staff and offensively, especially, with Jeff Lebby before and now moving forward, it's not going to change. We're all going to help each other. We're all going to game plan together. At the end of the day, on game day someone calls it, but there's a lot of help in between. What may be in between series may be on a 3rd down, a crucial 3rd down someone is going to speak up say we need to run this. That's why we do it together all week long."

A significant part of Littrell's focus has been on true freshman quarterback Jackson Arnold, who will be making his first collegiate start against Arizona. While there's been some big changes, the bowl practices have been huge for Arnold and Littrell to continue building a relationship on the field.

The bowl game will give Littrell and Arnold a head start on next year, when they'll lead the Sooners' offense together.

"Jackson is a phenomenal young man, extremely hard worker," Littrell said. "He's going to put in all the time it takes to prepare the right way each and every week, even though he wasn't the starter most of those games this year. Like I told him, we're both getting our first start together. It'll be an amazing time. No one better to do it with.

"Like I told him, we've got great playmakers around us, great coaches around us that are going to make plays for us, too. Our job is to work as hard as we can, collaborate effort with everybody else, and do our job, make the plays and manage the game that we're supposed to, and let the guys around us make huge plays for us, as well."

Littrell has seen a lot in his career. But his goal was always to return to the Sooners, the place where he has so many connections.

Starting Thursday, he'll be a big part of leading the Sooners into a new era.

"I'm just as much of a fan as I am a coach," Littrell said. "I'm a huge fan of Oklahoma. So I have high expectations of this program along with everybody sitting up here and everybody within our program, and so we know the expectations, and hey, we're going to do everything we can to go out and compete and win championships.

"But it's all about the coaches and players and the fans. That's what makes this place so special. I'm just glad to be home."

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