Brent Venables shares the biggest life lesson he learned from 2025 Oklahoma football season

The 2025 season came to a close for Oklahoma on Friday night. But for Brent Venables, the most important takeaways extended far beyond the final score.

Following the Sooners’ College Football Playoff loss to Alabama Crimson Tide, Venables reflected on what the year revealed about belief, culture and resilience. The themes he believes will define Oklahoma moving forward.

“Don’t let anybody on the outside put limitations on you, on what we can and can’t become,” Venables said, via his postgame press conference. “It matters about what we believe. It matters, the work that we put into it.”

Continuing, Venables emphasized that the season tested the program at every level, from expectations to execution. Through it all, he pointed to the cumulative impact of effort, sacrifice and trust in the process.

“I think, again, the strain, the love, the sacrifice, the work, the talent. I think there’s lots of layers to all of it,” Venables added.

A key pillar of that growth, according to Venables, was roster construction. He credited Oklahoma’s recruiting and transfer portal strategy as foundational to navigating the challenges of the season.

“I think our staff has recruited incredibly well,” Venables explained. “I thought that was kind of a foundational piece. I thought we brought in good players through the portal that helped us have the kind of season that we needed.”

Just as important, Venables stressed, was the cultural development inside the building. That’s something he views as a daily responsibility.

“Everything starts with me when it comes to being a tone-setter,” Venables stated. “The things that are important to our standards. The things that we value. The things that we’re gonna be about, the things that we’re willing to tolerate and not tolerate.”

More on Brent Venables, Oklahoma Sooners

Additionally, Venables noted that lasting success requires consistent nurturing. Not short-term fixes for his program.

“If you’re gonna do it the right way, and for something that lasts longer than just this moment, you have to nurture it every single day,” he explained. “And then the people make the place, at the end of the day.”

Despite the loss, Venables made it clear how proud he was of both the players returning next season and those moving on: “We couldn’t have done it if they didn’t stick with it, if they didn’t continue to believe when a lot of the things were going on around them,” Venables elaborated. “They could’ve bowed out, and they chose not to.”

All in all, Oklahoma’s season ended with a 34-24 defeat, sending Alabama on to a Rose Bowl quarterfinal matchup against Indiana Hoosiers. For Venables, however, the true measure of the year wasn’t the result. It was the commitment to “doing” rather than talking.

“What you do speaks a lot louder than, necessarily, what you say,” Venables concluded. “This is a group of guys — they were about the doing all year long.”