Brent Venables, Oklahoma Sooners won't shy away from expectations in 2025

USA Today

6 hours ago

The Oklahoma Sooners attended SEC Media Days on Wednesday, which meant fourth-year head coach Brent Venables was at the podium to talk about his 2025 team heading into the program's second season in the Southeastern Conference.
Venables dove into plenty of topics in his address to the media. One of those topics was the weight of the expectations of coaching and playing at a place like Oklahoma. In true Brent Venables fashion, he didn't back down from the expectations or the challenges.
"Couldn't be more excited about what I've seen up to this point in time," Venables said. "This is a team I love to be in the building with every single day. I believe they have what it takes to claw our back to where I believe Oklahoma belongs. The expectations here and in the locker room are to win at the very highest level and to compete for a championship. That's always been the way it is here at the University of Oklahoma. We embrace those standards and expectations of excellence. You choose to come to Oklahoma to coach or to play on the biggest stage, in the biggest games, and you accept everything that comes with that. In the new era of college football, we expect to be a program that is a year in, year out consistently a College Football Playoff contender. I believe the sum of all of our parts with this football team, the 2025 version, gives us a chance to have a really good football team."
It's no secret that the Sooners haven't exactly played up to their own lofty standards in Venables' three years at the helm. A 6-7 season in 2022 was followed up by a bounce-back 10-3 season in 2023. But in 2024, Oklahoma sank back down to 6-7.
After a 22-year streak of zero losing seasons from 1999 to 2021, OU has produced two losing seasons in the last three years, all under Venables. The last losing year before Venables' arrival was under head coach John Blake in his final season in 1998.
Additionally, the standard in Norman isn't just to have a winning season. The standard is to win conference championships, make the CFP, and win national championships. Oklahoma hasn't been close to that in two of Venables' three years.
To his credit, Venables has never shied away from that, even when things got tough. That's a significant part of the reason why he was selected as OU's next head coach in December 2021 and why he still holds the job despite underwhelming returns so far.
Venables also talked about the many changes the program has seen this offseason, detailing plenty of "new" inside the Switzer Center this summer.
"We've had a lot of changes since January," Venables said. "I'm sure that most coaches stood up here and talked about a lot of changes. That's the environment we're at today between a portal, recruiting, new coaches, new offense, a new GM structure. We've also had tremendous retention, which foundationally for me is what it's all about. Continuity, guys returning with experience and are highly invested in the locker room. They're attracted to the vision of the program. That's incredibly important to me. No doubt we've improved our roster. Again, I believe that we've created a better overall staff with the additions that we've brought in. Top to bottom we've made great gains in the weight room with building more mass, improving our strength, point of attack. We needed to do that. We had a lot of freshmen that played a year ago. Our bowl game, our top 48 players on the offense, defense, two deep, 24 of them were freshmen. We needed to become more functionally strong and be a better point-of-attack team."
But the changes didn't stop there, as the coaching staff has some new faces, and of course, new general manager Jim Nagy entered the fold this offseason.
"Got five new coaches," Venables said. "Coach (Ben) Arbuckle, Coach (John) Kuceyeski, Coach (Kevin) Wilson, a former offensive coordinator at Oklahoma, and former head coach at both Indiana and Tulsa, offensive coordinator for a good while at Ohio State. A great friend of mine. Really successful coach. One of the best play callers that I've ever been around. He's also on our staff. I hired two linebacker coaches, an outside linebacker coach that's been a coordinator at an elite level (Wes Goodwin). He'll be my outside linebacker coach. Then coach Nate Dreiling, who will coach our inside linebackers. Also been a really good coordinator as well. All these coaches along with our new front office staff, (general manager) Jim Nagy, the depth of people he's brought into the building as well. Hit the ground running. Ton of fun. I love their energy, their buy-in, the things that they've added to our culture day in, day out. It's been fantastic. A change as we all know is inevitable. Nothing ever stays the same. Every year my job and my focus is on how to move the program together, move it forward, face the new challenges, the headwinds that are a part of all of it that you experience every year, but maintaining our mission during that process and not flinching even when maybe a lot of people are."
Venables dug even deeper on Nagy's impact and his impact on the program, just in the short time he's been at OU.
"We're literally just kind of starting the root system," Venables said. "He hired his last few guys just several weeks ago. Went through our very first cycle that was halfway done when he jumped in. I think you'll really see the fruits of the labor of the vision of what we want to do and what we want to become through that space over the next couple of cycles recruiting. They love it. What I love about Jim and his staff is they're really passionate about what they do. They care about people. They love building things. They work well together. They've got those types of skills."
Clearly, "change" has been one of the biggest themes of this offseason for the Sooners. Venables knew it was needed after last season's disappointment. The program has made so many moves to prevent another embarrassing year like 2024 from happening again.
"Talking season" is almost over in Oklahoma. In six weeks, the Sooners will put it all on the field. The most pivotal season in Brent Venables' head coaching tenure is about to begin.
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