Should Knowles becomes Sooners' next defensive coordinator, Venables must still learn to be a head coach

Quick, think of one national championship coach who didn’t plainly appear to have it all together.
I can think of one.
Les Miles.
He was clearly capable at LSU and, prior to landing in Baton Rouge, won 8, 9 and 7 games his last three seasons at Oklahoma State, giving Mike Gundy a foundation upon which to build.
Good coach.
Knew how to run a program.
Kansas not included.
But he never really figured out clock management.
It’s not clear he ever did more with less beyond a stunning 16-13 Bedlam upset on Nov. 24, 2001 in Norman and another one, 38-28, on Nov. 30, 2002, in Stillwater.
While his interviews were must-watch and great fun, they didn’t exactly reflect stability at the top.
A different breed of cat, Dean Blevins might say.
Even Miles’ national championship team was something of an outlier, LSU reaching the BCS title game in the age of a two-team playoff despite two losses, each in triple overtime, at Kentucky and home to Arkansas, two teams that wound up finishing outside the season-ending polls.
I once played a round of golf with him and Bob Simmons at a coaches’ caravan type thing in Woodward.
We shared a cart.
Great guy.
Still, to watch him on the sidelines or in front of a camera, Miles never quite seemed like THAT guy.
Make sense?
Of course, lots of coaches who appear to be THAT guy aren’t.
But just about every coach who is THAT guy — Miles aside — looks like THAT guy, carries himself like THAT guy, projects as THAT guy, has his finger on the pulse as only THAT guy can have.
So even as Oklahoma goes about trying to land the great Jim Knowles as its next defensive coordinator, fresh off a national championship assisting Ryan Day at Ohio State, it’s good to remember the Sooners will still not be going where they ultimately want to go until Brent Venables begins to look, carry and project himself much more like THAT guy.
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That guy, for instance, runs a clean sideline and adds value by making myriad decisions affecting all sides of the ball from opening kick to the clock striking zero, all without doing his assistants’ jobs for them.
That guy gets his best players on the field, rather than make everybody wait most of the season for Jacob Jordan to catch passes or Xavier Robinson to get carries.
That guy doesn’t lead a program where injured players are never heard from again without explanation.
Nor does he employ assistant coaches he can’t trust to speak for themselves.
Or, if he can trust them, nor does he silence them as part of some arcane, archaic, dumb and counterproductive effort to control every little thing he can’t possibly control in the first place.
We hear frequently that eight wins next season might keep Venables his job and, if not eight, certainly nine.
Most would tell you should Ben Arbuckle work out as offensive coordinator and John Mateer at quarterback, and if Knowles can be brought to run the defense, Venables will be right where he wants to be.
That’s wrong.
OU would improve, yes, but that would only place Venables alongside Gary Gibbs among Sooner skippers: a good coach who wins — Gibbs went 7-4, 8-3, 9-3 his first three seasons and 9-3 again his fifth — but whose limits were all too clear.
Gibbs had the horses and the staff but did not add value like a great head coach adds value.
The swagger Venables has gotten the defense to carry itself with he must get the entire team to carry itself with.
The culture he builds cannot just be from the forest in, but also from the trees out.
His calls must be the right ones.
Bob Stoops didn’t micromanage his offense, defense nor special teams, but made all three of them better and the first half of his tenure his trick plays worked and his timing was impeccable bringing them out.
All that and though his assistants had a high level of autonomy, they remained accountable to him.
In his own way, Venables must do all of that stuff, yet after three seasons it’s not clear he’s doing any of that stuff.
He’s supposed to be the smartest guy in the room, the best manager, the one most equipped to make tough calls in a job that must produce many every day, a job he’s already been performing, or attempting to, for three seasons.
He can’t be searching.
Or he can’t be searching much longer, but be solving instead.
Get Knowles and he’s crushed the offseason, but that leaves Saturdays in the fall.
No matter who he hires next, Venables has miles to go.