How the balance between Jim Nagy and Brent Venables could produce best version of Oklahoma Sooners yet

Yahoo

07-07-2025

How the balance between Jim Nagy and Brent Venables could produce best version of Oklahoma Sooners yet originally appeared on A to Z Sports.
As soon as he was introduced as general manager of the Oklahoma Sooners, fans wondered how the balance would work between Jim Nagy and head coach Brent Venables.
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While they have each made remarks about each other's role and how helpful the other has been, we've never really seen either be detailed about the balance.
In a recent interview with The Triple Option podcast, Nagy slightly peeled back the curtain on what he is doing to help Venables and his staff.
"I'm here, more than anything, to help the coaching staff and help build this roster, and streamline the process. Everyone says, 'They're trying to go to an NFL model.' And yes, my background is in the NFL. I've never worked in college football before, but I think there's some process things that we've brought to Oklahoma that I think are going to help the evaluation process and certainly the valuation process. We've never had to really value players.
It's going to be a really fun collaboration. It already has been over the last three months, just getting in the building with the coaches. Certainly been energizing for me. I've been out of a football building for the last seven years, running the Reese's Senior Bowl. So just getting around coaches and players again has been awesome.
We're trying to make their jobs easier in places. These college coaches got a lot on their plates… It is going to be a true split structure between Coach Venables and myself. I didn't want to come in here and just blow this thing up, watching tape and maybe not agree with where they were at with some of their assessments on players. We haven't done that.'
While this isn't a full job description of what exactly Nagy is doing, there are a few important things that I took notice of.
I think having that front office in place to help the staff balance and manage things will take a significant load off of this coaching staff. Behind the scenes of last year's disaster season, the staff had to placate players and focus on roster retention for weeks, time that took away from developing, coaching, and building game plans.
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Obviously, every staff has to do that, but the front office taking over that responsibility (for the most part) frees up the coaches to actually coach moving forward.
That last paragraph also stands out. Nagy says he "didn't come in here to blow this thing up", which speaks to the point about aiming for true synergy between him and Venables' staff.
With Nagy's NFL background and Venables and co's coaching ability, this could be a massive success for the Oklahoma Sooners if this works out in the long term. It's a unique strategy and therefore risky, but the upside is tremendous.
Related: Why evaluating Brent Venables in the upcoming 2025 season might be more complicated than many Oklahoma fans will expect
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This story was originally reported by A to Z Sports on Jul 6, 2025, where it first appeared.