If Sooners can just reach a place it will matter, Venables has x-factor nailed
Getting there requires cracking the head-coaching code that's proven so elusive
Brent Venables’ ability to breed confidence despite what can only be judged to be a thus-far failed three-season tenure as Oklahoma’s football coach, remains amazing.
You want to root for him, you want to believe in him, you want to convince yourself two losing campaigns out of three to be utter aberrations and the Sooners will begin becoming the perennial playoff team they’re supposed to be in any 12-team bracket as soon as this season.
And Wednesday, at SEC media days in Atlanta, Venables again made the case and again made it believable.
It’s uncanny.
“This is a team I love to be in the building with every single day. I believe [our players] have what it takes to claw our way back to where I believe Oklahoma belongs,” he said. “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.”
So maybe this is the year.
Though he’s on his third offensive coordinator, there’s more confidence than ever in the latest, Ben Arbuckle, who bet on himself, leaving Washington State for Norman, confident he’d land the transfer portal’s most sought after quarterback — John Mateer, also from Washington State — which he did.
Among superlatives Venables offered Wednesday on Mateer, he called him “a connector,” said he plays the game as though “in fast forward and he’s “super athletic” and “throws the ball really well on the run” and just think what, say, only even 15 (or maybe 40) completed passes on the run might do for OU this season.
Also, Mateer “turned down more money” from elsewhere to take less money in Norman, Venables said, which is not nothing.
On the other side of the ball, the Sooners landed perhaps the most seasoned and proven defensive coordinator in the nation, man by the name of Brent Venables.
I’m not sure that’s a great idea, but if you want to believe it is, you can certainly make a case.
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If looking beyond the surface, there’s this sentiment from Venables, coming up as he went deep on the trio of players he brought with him to Atlanta: Mateer, safety Robert Spears Jennings and defensive end R. Mason Thomas.
“All three were, to some degree, afterthoughts or under-valued, under-recruited players. I love that about the game,” he said. “I love pulling for guys like this. They also are reflective of what the game of football at this level is all about. It’s about development in every part of their life.”
That, of course, is the gateway into everything Venables believes.
Development requires being coachable, staying in one place long enough to develop, buying into a program, system and teammates, all of which demand a lack of selfishness, too.
In an ever-changing and never-more-selfish college football landscape, they’re the things Venables holds dear.
“I’ve said that the most important thing that every player in the locker room should covet is the respect and trust of their teammates,” he said. “They certainly have done that.”
Addressing the change that’s enveloped college football and college sports at large, Venables made clear some things, for him, do not change.
“We’ve also had tremendous retention, which foundationally for me is what it’s all about,” he said. “Continuity, guys returning with experience and are highly invested in the locker room … attracted to the vision of the program. That’s incredibly important to me.”
It’s the secret sauce.
Or, it should be.
In a sport in which athletes can be bought, can venture from place to place, year to year, hoping to be bought again for more; that rewards mercenary tendencies; that leaves coaches like Venables with their quaint “Kumbaya” values appearing out of touch with reality … the Sooner coach holds tight to those values nonetheless.
It’s the x-factor, I’m convinced.
Eventually, athletic directors, coaches and general managers will come to understand what this brave new college football world demands and do it.
But it will be those who do it without giving up the old school values, those for whom such values are as essential as breathing, who know how to pass them on to their teams, who will be the ones who win the race and keep winning it.
That’s Venables.
Those values are the final ingredients to greatness and the Sooner head coach is all about them.
If he can just learn how to be a winning skipper at all, the jump to sustained winning and winning big should come fairly easily.
But that still leaves cracking the head-coaching code in the first place, which he has yet to crack, which he must still crack whether he’s his own defensive coordinator or not.
Venables is easy to root for.
In the end, he has and knows what it takes.
Everything before the end?
Good question.
Again, maybe this is the year.