If only Joe Harroz had known the Sooners as well as Brent Venables knew them, a huge mistake may have been avoided
As you may know, about this time each week, I tend to write something along the lines of a preview column for the game ahead, and at 3:15 p.m. Saturday it’s No. 19 Ole Miss (6-3, 4-3 SEC) venturing into Owen Field to face Oklahoma (5-4, 3-3).
This, however, will not be that.
For the record, on the twice-weekly podcast I share with Ryan Welton, I’ve already chosen the Sooners to prevail 24-13. As I said during it, I find OU’s chances to win to be only a bit better than 50 percent. Yet, if it wins, the narrative I’ve chosen also has the home team covering the spread.
So there you go.
I heartily invite you to watch or listen. We’d really appreciate it. We’ve gone from tens of watchers and listeners to hundreds and thousands, and it’s all very exciting and we’d love for you to join us.
I reference it, and the score I’ve chosen, because it appears I must return to the well of what I wrote yesterday, under the headline “Regent insults fans, prez behind contract, AD appears not in charge and who’s watching over football, anyway?”
In fact, because this column follows that one, and that one may be required for full context, I’ve just now taken the paywall down guarding the final two-thirds of my previous effort.
Go here right now and you can read it.
I had to return to the topic because I remembered something head coach Brent Venables said on Tuesday that, when matched up with what university president Joe Harroz said Wednesday, makes the contract extension Venables received that much more egregious a lapse in judgment.
Remember, Venables had his salary raised to $10 million this season, a figure that will increase over time, with a buyout north of $25 million more than it had previously been. For instance, the cost of firing him after this season without the extension would have been $26.2 million, but with the extension would now be $51.67 million.
Well, in addition to OU Board of Regents chair Rick Nagel trying to settle the fan base down at Wednesday’s regents meeting about what could still become Venables’ third losing season in five years, Harroz had much to say, too.
“The leading force [why the new contract] got done was because Brent Venables made it to the playoffs, and he’s the head coach we want for a long time …,” Harroz said. “And we knew that after that game and after that run last year.”
Honestly, I’m not sure which game was “that game,” the victory over LSU that put OU in the playoff or the loss to Alabama once there, after which Harroz took stock of the coach and the program and decided Venables needed a new, longer, richer contract fully capable of hamstringing the university for years to come should it want out of it.
Nonetheless, what he’s saying is clear.
Reaching the playoff was all the convincing he, and perhaps the regents, needed to get rolling on a new contract.
“That commitment we had and the desire to retain [Venables] was something we were absolutely sure of and was very clear after the season we had last year,” Harroz also said on Wednesday.
Too bad he couldn’t have run it past a coach as honest as, oh, I don’t know, Brent Venables?
I kid, because I presume Venables was happy to be given a new, lengthier and richer contract with a wildly exorbitant buyout. Who wouldn’t be? But I don’t kid because if Venables had said to Harroz way back when what he said to reporters on Tuesday, perhaps the university president might have backed off.
Not that it lets Harroz off the hook.
What did Venables say?
The few key words are part of a marathon of an answer to a question I found hard to follow in the first place. Nonetheless, here is a piece of that marathon answer.
“I know nobody wants me to say this, but from ’24 to ’25, we got better in 24 categories, and it was incremental improvement. Okay, incremental,” Venables said. “It was enough for us to, combined with the rest of our team, to go to the playoffs.
“But at the same time, in closed door meetings, it was, ‘It can’t look like this next year and everything stays the same,’ and ‘It just ain’t gonna be good enough and it’s got to be more than incremental.’”
If that’s hard to follow, I’ll translate.
Coming out of the 2025 season, after going to the playoff, Venables and his coaching realized, “It can’t look like this next year,” because if it did, it would not be enough to sustain the same type of success.
Also, it wasn’t only obvious to Venables and staff, but to anybody who watched the team play every week.
Recall, Oklahoma could not have beaten Tennessee 33-27 without a 71-yard fumble return for a score from R Mason Thomas in the first quarter, nor without a pair of interceptions that created 74 return yards. Nor could it have beaten Alabama 23-21 two weeks later without Eli Bowen’s 87-yard interception return for a touchdown, not to mention a pair of takeaways via fumble recovery.
Nor could the Sooners expect 17 points each game to ever be enough to win long term, yet that’s exactly what they scored, back-to-back, in Games 11 and 12, against Missouri and LSU, and won nonetheless.
It was a high-wire act in a tornado is what it was, yet somehow OU survived.
It was not optimal, not repeatable, nor, good chance, even possible to do again, yet somehow OU survived.
Though the Sooners went 10-2, it could very easily have been 6-6, 7-5 or 8-4.
Venables and staff knew that, talked about it behind closed doors and entered this season knowing they couldn’t repeat last season and expect to win as many games or reach the playoff, none of which made them geniuses, only realists.
But you know who understood none of that?
The president of the university, Harroz, at least, and probably our good friend Rick Nagel and his board of regents, too.
Continuity is good.
I’d also like Venables to have long-term success in his position.
But tying yourself to him with a contract that sat unsigned until Oct. 13, a contract that makes it so much harder to let him go should he need to be let go, is malpractice.
Then, Wednesday, trying to tell everybody to pipe down, was also malpractice.
Great
I think we’re good.
Go Sooners.
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