The Brent Venables way and his vision for the future of Oklahoma football

NORMAN, Okla. — Brent Venables stopped himself mid-conversation. He does that sometimes. He stood up from the seating area in the middle of his office to grab a football off the wall.

He walked back, ball in hand, and set it on the ottoman. It commemorated Oklahoma’s 13-2 win over Florida State in the 2001 BCS National Championship Game and served as a reminder of the Sooners’ perfect 2000 season under Bob Stoops. Venables was the co-defensive coordinator on that team.

“We were the winningest program in college football while I was here for 13 years the first time,” Venables said. “And it was a rebuild.

“Talk about that first year of being 7-5 (in 1999). Then we went 12-0. A very fortunate 12-0 — we had a lot of close wins — then to (one of the) biggest underdogs in the history of college football national championships. Not only did we win, we shut them out and then we go on this amazing run from there. We did it with a bunch of misfits who became a blend of national award winners.”

The ball sat on that ottoman for the remainder of the interview, but nothing with Venables is rehearsed. He’s an eccentric personality whose passion rushes out while talking with arm movements, exuberant facial expressions and even, sometimes, props. But in that moment, you could see his powerful sales pitch to the recruits who sit in this same office. Venables believes Oklahoma will win big again, and perhaps that’s why the Sooners managed to sign the No. 4 recruiting class in the 247Sports Composite in the 2023 cycle despite struggling through a 6-7 season in the coach’s first year.

The beauty of Venables’ point is that he didn’t have to directly compare the two situations. He didn’t even bother to connect the dots. He just simply illustrated how much progress can be made from Year 1 to Year 2 if things are built on a sturdy foundation with a hungry coaching staff and a roster that’s completely bought in.

“I was just an assistant,” he said, sarcastically. “I know I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Venables was voicing criticism he heard through his first tough year. The man helped Oklahoma to its last national championship then went to Clemson for more than a decade and played a key role as the Tigers won two national titles. He scoffs at the idea that those achievements don’t translate to his current job.

“That would be the argument on the other side of it, right?” Venables said. “Any time you’re going from the assistant coach to the head coach, you have more to prove. I don’t need a chip on my shoulder. I know I have a lot to prove. People are counting on me. That’s what is driving me more than anything.”

There is nobody more keenly aware that Oklahoma’s 6-7 record was unacceptable. Venables will tell you about the close losses and what the season could have looked like had the ball bounced a couple of different ways. It probably would have helped if quarterback Dillon Gabriel stayed healthy the entire year. But that’s how football goes sometimes.

It can’t go that way again.

That’s why Venables’ roster has undergone a massive rebuild. More than 50 scholarship players have departed since he arrived. Some of that was NFL Draft, some of that was exhaustion of eligibility, and some of that was transfers who needed a fresh start. Now the real work begins — stacking recruiting classes like the Sooners’ 2023 haul.

“You’re selling a lot of things,” Venables said. “The No. 1 thing is not casting this net in the middle of the ocean and pulling it in as a recruiting philosophy. ‘Let’s see what we got. We got a whitefish, a redfish, a tarpon, a bass, a catfish.’ And if you don’t like it, you throw it back in the water. You are very open and honest about what their experience is going to be when they get here.

“I start with telling them how hard it is going to be. I come from a place of being a dad as a compass — what I would want for my own kids. I know a large percentage of the kids we’re recruiting will never play in the NFL, but we’re here to facilitate all of their dreams of bringing out the best of them.”

Recruits are buying his message. Oklahoma’s 2023 class featured three five-star prospects and eight total players who ranked in the top 120 nationally. Part of that group was five-star quarterback Jackson Arnold from Texas and five defensive players. Venables is a defensive coach, yet he still landed Arnold while bolstering the Sooners defense. It was the best — and deepest — recruiting class Oklahoma has signed in close to 20 years.

The goal, of course, is to build a program that can compete in the SEC after Oklahoma completes its final season in the Big 12. The vision is to not only make the College Football Playoff but to also advance once it arrives, something Lincoln Riley’s teams failed to accomplish in four tries.

And even though Oklahoma’s 2023 class was very impressive, it still lagged considerably behind the sport’s truly elite programs from a pure athleticism standpoint. Alabama’s 2023 class included nine five-star prospects and nine other top-100 players. The gap between that and what Oklahoma signed is as long as the route you’d take to drive from Norman to Tuscaloosa.

That’s where things get interesting with Venables. He’s aware of recruiting numbers — he’s just not obsessed with rankings. He understands you need a certain amount of talent, but he also believes that there’s more to the story than just the raw data you’ll find in recruiting rankings. Remember, you’re talking about a coach who helped transform Clemson from a solid program to a national power without signing monster recruiting classes.

Since the beginning of the online recruiting rankings era (2000), only three times has a team won a national title without having signed a top-five class in any of the previous four cycles. Venables was asked to guess who they were.

“I bet it’s Clemson and Oklahoma,” he said.

He was right on one of his guesses. Clemson did it twice (2016 and 2018) and Auburn did it in 2010. All three of those programs signed at least one top-10 class in those four years and were led by generational talents at quarterback, Cam Newton, Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence.

Venables’ second guess, Oklahoma, would be his vision for the future’s becoming a reality.

The truth is, Venables probably won’t sign a recruiting class with 15 top-100 players. Oklahoma isn’t going to be a talent-churner that signs 30 players a year without somehow ever running out of space. Venables wants people to stay. The right people.

He wants to recruit elite-level classes, obviously, but he isn’t fixated on the idea that you have to sign mega classes to win a national title in today’s game. Venables helped evaluate and sign three-star prospects at Clemson such as Isaiah Simmons, Grady Jarrett, K’Von Wallace, James Skalski and many others. They turned out to be important pieces on very good teams. Why wouldn’t Venables, who has one of the best eyes for talent in the college game, feel as though he could do it again and complement them with highly rated players in his classes?

“I want to attract guys that value education, they value blue-collar work ethic and they are going to run right towards the same line that everybody’s got to get in, regardless of where you were recruiting from, how many offers, stars,” Venables said. “You gotta get your butt in the same line and work your way to the front. If you don’t like that, don’t come here. If you come here, it’s going to be really tough and really challenging. What it takes to be successful in football is really hard. Football isn’t complicated, life is complicated. We’re going to help people manage that.”

Does that always line up with the vision of five-star recruits? Venables has no tolerance for drama with prospects, which might eliminate Oklahoma in many high-profile recruitments. Coaches often have to put up with a lot to land a signature from an elite prospect. And often that still isn’t enough. That’s why Venables has implemented his no-visit policy — prospects committed to Oklahoma are not permitted to visit other schools — as a way to weed out the types of players he’s trying to avoid bringing into his program.

“Guys who have drama in recruiting are always guys who bring drama in the locker room,” Venables said. “It’s a 100 percent hit rate, 100 percent. You’re talking to someone that has done it for 28 years. Drama in recruiting, drama in the locker room. Somebody should do some research on that one.”

But if that means fewer top-100 players, will Oklahoma find the success its fans expect?

Venables believes it will. Clemson is a testament to that. Kansas State, which had a handful of top-10 teams under coach Bill Snyder in the 1990s, is a testament to that. Those are the two programs that molded the Venables we know today. Those teams had top-end talent, but they emphasized evaluation with skills and character.

Is that still a good plan in 2023? Clemson’s championship came before the recruiting rankings became so lopsided, before it was commonplace for more than half of the top 100 players in the country to sign with a collection of four or five schools. Oklahoma wants to consistently be in that group of five schools, but it might have to beat them first. Add in name, image and likeness and the transfer portal, and assembling a championship roster is trickier than ever.

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney will likely be the first to tell you how hard it is to transform a program from good to top three in the nation. Venables was a part of that build. But it’s even harder now. So what comes first? The talent or the wins? That’s the game Venables is playing now.

“It’s different, but it’s still the same,” Venables said. “Bill Snyder created a real family environment. But he created this amazing belief that it’s ‘us against the world.’ He had a bunch of underdogs. I was an underdog. He promoted that and nurtured that. You’re attracting people who believe what you believe. It’s not ‘me’ centered, it’s team centered. You’re trying to find humble guys.

“You have to start with talent. You have to be good enough. But you have to find the guys who value what I’m talking about.”

Oklahoma’s 2023 class was deep and talented. If the members of that class also exemplify what Venables preaches, then that’s a hell of a first year. The on-the-field record is a glaring eyesore, but the recruiting class is a welcomed breath of hope for Sooners fans ready to return to prominence. Fast.

It might happen in Year 2 as it did for Oklahoma in 2000. That’s what Venables hopes. He knows patience isn’t the hallmark of Oklahoma fandom. But in this game, sometimes it takes time.

Time is of the essence with everything Venables talks about with his team, as it pertains to the long-term goals but also maximizing every single day. He brings an hourglass to every meeting to remind his players that they are in the golden era of their lives and not to waste a single moment.

He speaks to his team like they’re his kids. He wants them to feel loved. He wants to cultivate an environment in which each player feels valued. No detail is overlooked, down to ensuring the dining hall staff treats the players like family.

Venables hears a lot about the SEC and whether his program is ready to transition to the best conference — by far — in college football. Oklahoma has dominated the Big 12 for much of the past 20 years and beyond. It’s a new world in the new league.

“We have to worry about what kind of program we are now,” he said. “Going to a new conference, there are going to be all types of new challenges. It’ll be as big of a challenge as Oklahoma has ever had, but Oklahoma has always responded. For a long, long time.”

Venables has a plan for the long term. It’s worked before, and he swears it’ll work again.

Now it’s about giving the coach time to see it through.