Brent Venables reflects on poor state of Oklahoma football program when he took over

Brent Venables reflected on the poor state of Oklahoma when he took over the football program in 2022. He returned to Norman after coaching at Clemson as Lincoln Riley left for USC.

Safe to say, it wasn’t like Riley taking over for Bob Stoops when the now-Trojans head coach got his first heading coaching gig. Venables cited a culture rebuild that’s still ongoing.

“Yeah, so we had a lot to work through, and I chose not to, you know, ask anyone to leave when I first got here,” Venables said. “Just let me give everybody a fair shot and just kind of see where we’re at and through time, you know, some players chose to leave. Some players just weren’t fitting the bill when it comes to going to class and living right off the field, you know.

“You know, as a football program, we we had a lot of issues the first year, and we had guys weren’t going to class. We had a 2.2 team GPA, and a lot of guys that didn’t pass drug tests a lot. And so what comes with that, you know, lack of motivation, lack of synergy, lack of ambition. And so we had, and there were some, you know, broken spirits too, and guys that maybe weren’t confident on what we could become. So, you know, changing the mindset and how we thought (was the way to go).”

From 1999-2016, Stoops went 190-48 as head coach of Oklahoma, winning 10 Big 12 titles. Stoops also won the national title in 2000, leading the Sooners to a 13-0 record.

Venables took over for Riley, who kept riding the wave and developed and coached Heisman caliber quarterbacks. But after Riley left for USC, Stoops returned for one game in 2021 before the school brought back Venables (who coached as the Oklahoma DC from 1999-2011).

Venables saw the height of the Oklahoma football program under Stoops and no doubt has tried to bring it back. But through three seasons, Venables is just 22-17 at Oklahoma with a 10-3 season in 2023.