Brent Venables’ eyes followed his own index finger.
“We’ve made plenty of the mistakes along the way,” the new Oklahoma football coach said, “but I know the needle is continuing to move in the right direction.”
Venables broke out the finger needle in the midst of a 40-minute press conference … after the spring game. He had a nine-minute opening statement, and he later riffed for roughly that long about eradicating “insidious behavior” from the program and life itself.
And a few days prior to OU’s spring game, Venables chatted for 45 minutes in another press conference — conducted during a false fire alarm, strobe lights flashing across Venables’ face.
This is a man who can talk P.J. Fleck under the table.
Unlike the more strategic, polished Fleck, Venables’ answers go hither and yon. In one presser, he offers a smart story about players cleaning the team’s locker room. In another, he’s praising Clemson, where Venables helped the Tigers win two national titles as defensive coordinator and an elite recruiter.
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“They’re building a NIL facility, and 100 yards of wellness,” Venables said. “One hundred yards of elite recovery. That’s cryotherapy, that’s infrared beds, that’s hyperbaric chambers, that’s massage beds … I say that because that’s very focused on the players, and this game, what I do, I wouldn’t be able to do it without the players.”
Translation: Venables will cost Oklahoma hundreds of millions of dollars. OU is not going to do without whatever Clemson has for very long without Venables’ showing that frustration on his face. He makes a strong impression on players — two prospects from Nebraska have told me as much — and will expect the Sooner brass to shell out.
And maybe OU, as it goes into the SEC, needs to spend that much. Maybe Venables, who comes across like your typical sincere defensive coordinator on his fifth Red Bull, will be precisely what the Sooners need.
Recruits want to play for the guy; already, the Sooners have four Top 100 prospects — including five-star quarterback Jackson Arnold — in the 2023 class. OU fans might run through a wall for him if he wins. Venables’ predecessor, Lincoln Riley, had some fire to him, but he was a cooler, calmer offensive mind, fit for the USC job he took just hours after losing to Oklahoma State in Bedlam. Excellent defensive coordinator Alex Grinch went with him.
OU — the fans, the players, the program, former coach Bob Stoops — was mad. Stoops took over in an interim role and promised the school would find a good coach.
"My first mission was to remind everybody — players, community, everybody at the university — Lincoln Riley didn't invent OU football, K?" Stoops said this spring in the Oklahoma state legislature, of all places. "Everyone needed a little wake-up call because they kind of slipped into thinking he did."
“Yeah!” said one legislator.
Bud Wilkinson created the “monster,” Stoops said.
“I had to deal with it for 18 years,” Stoops said. “And it’s a monster. But I loved it.”
Now the monster belongs to Venables, who worked for Stoops 13 years. Notably, he was not OU’s choice in June 2017, when Stoops abruptly retired and anointed Riley as his immediate successor. Riley went 55-10 over five seasons, won four conference titles — and seemed to be a name up for a lot of NFL jobs each winter. That never happens by accident. Riley was destined to leave.
So Oklahoma went out and hired a guy who never, ever will.
It’s Venables’ first head coaching job, and I predict it’ll be his last. Either his brand of leadership takes Oklahoma that last couple yards to a national title, or he flames out because losing gnaws right through him.
But first? Three games into his head coaching tenure, he takes a trip to Nebraska.
Venables was part of the Kansas State team that played there in 1991, and, as part of K-State and OU staffs, Venables coached at NU in ’93, ’95, ’97, ’01, ’05 and ’09. At least on paper, he won’t be bringing one of Oklahoma’s elite teams for breakfast in Memorial Stadium.
The Sooners had a national title-caliber roster in 2021 and underachieved. They were 9-0 — and only ranked eighth! — when they lost 27-14 to Baylor. Oklahoma State beat them 37-33. When Riley left, the die was cast that his quarterback Caleb Williams, would follow Riley to USC. The other five-star QB, Spencer Rattler, transferred to South Carolina; oddly, an OU tight end followed Rattler and a receiver followed Williams. Academic All-American and top safety Patrick Fields transferred to Stanford. Seven OU players — five from the defense — were selected in the NFL draft.
Like Nebraska, OU restocked its roster through the transfer portal — 14 additions in all. The Sooners’ starting corners may well come from North Carolina (Trey Morrison) and Wyoming (CJ Coldon), while its top new defensive linemen played at Tulane (Jeffrey Johnson) and Hawaii (Jonah La’ulu) last season. Receivers JJ Hester (Missouri) and LV Bunkley-Shelton (Arizona State) will be in the rotation.
Did Oklahoma do better in the portal at quarterback than Nebraska? The Sooners got UCF’s Dillon Gabriel and Pittsburgh’s Davis Beville. Seems like a wash, but Gabriel threw 28 passes in the spring game (completing 19 for 250 yards) while Nebraska shut down Casey Thompson after a few lackluster drives.
Venables has focused on chemistry with his coaching staff — Jeff Lebby and Ted Roof are the respective coordinators, with Todd Bates as the team’s associate head coach and lead recruiter — and getting his players to buy into the same culture Dabo Swinney and Clemson used to dominate the ACC.
“I’m not thinking ‘oh, let’s have a great team this year!’” Venables said after the spring game. “That’s the least of my concerns. I’m focused on building the program the right way. If we let the toothpaste out of the tube, we can’t get it back in. We can’t miss. There’s one time to do it — the first time.”
Sounds like a coach who’d sacrifice a little in the short term to build a better SEC program, perhaps because OU isn’t built to run the table in 2022. In the Big 12 media’s preseason poll, just one Sooner — punter Michael Turk — made the All-Big 12 preseason team. Oklahoma finished second in the preseason poll, but Baylor and Oklahoma State — who both visit Norman — should be just as good as they were in 2021. Kansas State is dangerous, and Texas, in its second year under Steve Sarkisian, could take a jump, too.
Venables wouldn’t dare concede a title in his first year. Not his style. But Oklahoma will have an overhauled roster and a new coaching staff getting to know each other. Expect growing pains. Swinney had them at Clemson. Fleck had them at Minnesota. And Venables has more juice than either one. His OU will be acquired taste.
“Insidious behavior is just something we have to guard against as a football team,” Venables said. “I don’t have the Webster’s Dictionary right in front of me but the gist of it is, it’s slow, it’s incremental, sometimes it’s not noticeable, but it has harmful effects. It can be an act, a decision, a person, but it’s a behavioral thing.”
One way or another, yeah, Oklahoma is going to be a lot.