Oklahoma Sooners football helmet (Photo By John Reed-Imagn Images)
The news in college football sounds like a sitcom plot at times. Oklahoma fans spent the summer dreaming about big plays and a run at the playoff. Now they’re stuck talking about Venmo notes.

The Sooners opened the season ranked No. 18 in the AP Top-25. Hopes were high when transfer quarterback John Mateer arrived from Washington State. He followed offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle and quarterbacks coach John Kuceyeski to Norman after a solid year in Pullman. Everything looked set for a fresh start. Then insider Pete Thamel dropped something that no one expected.

According to Thamel, Oklahoma is looking into Venmo transactions tied to Mateer from 2022 that reference “sports gambling.”

One even named a specific game that is the UCLA-USC thriller that ended 48-45 in favor of the Trojans. Both teams were in the Top 20 that day. Mateer was a redshirt freshman then.

How The Gambling Questions Started

Oklahoma’s John Mateer (Photo By  SARAH PHIPPS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

Two transactions have sparked the conversation. Both carry “sports gambling” in the description. The second even lists that UCLA-USC game. That was enough to set off alarms in Norman.

There are a few ways this could go. If the account really belongs to Mateer, the notes might have been a joke between friends. Plenty of people write nonsense in Venmo descriptions just for laughs. Another theory? The account might not even be his. That idea started floating around on X on Tuesday morning.

The final, more serious possibility is that it’s Mateer’s account and he actually placed bets. If that’s true, it’s hard to imagine why he would write it down for the world to see. Student-athletes get constant reminders about the risks and rules of sports gambling. Turning those bets into digital paper trails makes little sense.

No one at Oklahoma has gone on record yet about the review. For now, it’s just an unexpected sideshow in what was supposed to be a straightforward preseason. Fans came into August talking about touchdowns. Now they’re talking about transaction memos.

The Sooners still have their opener ahead. Mateer still has the chance to become a key piece of their offense. But in 2025, college football headlines can flip in an instant. One minute it’s about depth charts. The next, it’s about whether your QB once wrote “sports gambling” on Venmo.