Colin Cowherd takes shot at Brent Venables, Oklahoma, compares to Lincoln Riley

Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd took a shot at Brent Venables and the state of the Oklahoma football program. Venables recently cited that he had to start over when he took over for Lincoln Riley, who left for USC.

On Tuesday, Venables cited rebuilding the culture in terms of team GPA, class attendance, passing drug tests etc. Well Cowherd, who’s a fan of Riley and what he did at Oklahoma and the initial parts of USC, went straight to wins.

“Lincoln Riley averaged 11 wins per year,” Cowherd wrote on Twitter/X. “Brent Venables averages 8. Congrats on fixing team spirits.”

Here are Venables’ full comments for context. The former Clemson defensive coordinator returned to Norman back in 2022.

“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).”

Venables improving those things is certainly what you need to do in order to build a program. While he’s done that, the first three years haven’t been that successful. Other than a 10-3 2023 season, where the Sooners finished No. 15 in the AP Poll, Venables and Oklahoma are just 22-17 overall.

Riley, who took over for Bob Stoops, went 55-10 in five seasons at Oklahoma. He won four Big 12 titles and made the College Football Playoff three straight seasons. To be fair, Riley is 26-14 in three seasons at USC, finishing No. 12 in the AP Poll his first season.

The comparisons for their Oklahoma tenures could be fair, but Riley being at USC hasn’t resulted in dynamite success, at least as of yet. Both coaches going into Year 4 have a lot to prove in their respective spots.