What are they trying to do, anyway?
So now Venables will be calling the defense after all? Add it to the number of things that been or become unsettled since the Sooner football coach got the job.
It’s not that Oklahoma struck out trying to make Jim Knowles its next defensive coordinator only to watch the former Poke exit Ohio State for Penn State for the same job.
It’s not that the next guy on the list may be from the mid-majors, Nate Dreiling, the just-hired defensive coordinator at Arkansas State, who just finished a one-year stint at Utah State as defensive coordinator and interim head coach, too.
It’s not even how whiplashy those parallel possibilities appear: the first an absolute star we must assume would have been handed the defensive reins by Brent Venables in ways Ted Roof nor Zac Alley never were; against another guy who didn’t become a defensive coordinator at all until 2022 at New Mexico State, a candidate one presumes would have Venables constantly over his shoulder if not outright running the defense himself
Indeed, in a recent mailbag, answering readers' questions, SoonerScoop’s George Stoia, who appears as plugged in as any reporter, wrote “I think everyone needs to realize that no matter the title of the next hire, the expectation is for Brent Venables to call the defense.”
It’s not any of that, but all of it and so much more, none of which makes it appear, as a program administrated by athletic director Joe Castiglione, nor a team coached by Venables, this entity we commonly call “Sooner Football” knows what it wants to do.
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