After Another Blowout Home Loss, It's Time for Oklahoma to Reevaluate Brent Venables

COLUMN

Nobody wanted to write this column. Least of all me.

But the standard, as Brent Venables likes to say, is the standard.

And Brent Venables has not reached the standard at Oklahoma. He’s been close a couple of times, but OU fans no longer settle for “close.”

It’s time. Sooner Nation deserves better. The OU football program deserves better. Six of the last seven decades of elite college football history deserves better.

The Sooners’ current head coach is simply, sadly, not the guy for the job. At the end of the season, OU leadership must to assemble for a forthright and thorough deep-dive on their honest evaluations of Venables as a head coach.

“Fire Venables? One year after he returned OU to the College Football Playoff? One year before a 24-team playoff is installed? Are you insane? With a brand new contract extension and a buyout north of $50 million?”

Probably sounds ridiculous to some, righteous to others.

“Well, who wants to pay that buyout?”

Who wants to endure the alternative?

Venables’ five-year track record as the face of the program says it’s time for athletic director Roger Denny, behind-the-curtain bossman Randall Stephenson and the OU Board of Regents to think about what they want the future of OU football to look like — both the near future and long-term.

Three of Venables’ five years have been abject failures — including the partially concluded 2026 season still going on, lowlighted by Saturday’s 42-25 loss to the mighty South Carolina Gamecocks.

"Incredibly pissed at myself," Venables said in his postgame press conference. "For all of us, just embarrasing. It's embarrassing. In every way."

Indeed. For the second time in a row, former Sooner assistant coach Shane Beamer brought in a decent to good USC squad (both teams came in with 4-3 records) that completely manhandled OU in its own house. This game was ruined early by a current of self-inflicted offensive penalties.

Coaches afterward seemed shocked to admit that the players were not ready to play.

The Sooners fell to 4-4 on the season, likely on their way to another 6-6 finish, the end of which will probably be punctuated by another loss (Venables is 0-4 in postseason games) to another middling team in some forgettable bowl game.

Of course, the product Oklahoma put on the field this weekend will be hard-pressed to win just two more games and achieve the participation ribbon of bowl eligibility.

If things go chalk, next week’s game at No. 17 Florida, visits to Norman from No. 12 Ole Miss and underachieving Texas A&M, and a road trip to No. 23 Missouri leaves the Sooners with a 5-7 record at best.

Three losing seasons at OU is a fireable offense, as John Blake learned in the late ‘90s.

“But hey, BV’s guys just knocked off No. 1-ranked Texas? Doesn’t that buy him more time?”

Maybe. Blake’s first career win was against the Longhorns. That bought him two years — two miserable years for Sooner Nation.

“Yes, Oklahoma has been wildly up and down under Venables. So next year — especially with a couple of top-10 recruiting classes coming in — should be up, yeah?”

Is that the new standard in Norman? Up and down? Drastically inconsistent? Hang in there through the tough times because maybe we’ll win 10 games next year?

Venables himself would assure us all that it is most certainly not the standard.

Here’s the thing: Venables is the one common thread that runs through his five seasons at the helm at Oklahoma.

He initially brought in Ted Roof as defensive coordinator. That was a failure.

He replaced Roof with Zac Alley as defensive coordinator, but Alley bailed out — to West Virginia! — because Venables wouldn’t fully turn the defense over to him and just be the head coach and CEO.

So Venables took over as his own defensive coordinator last year, and the results have been really good — for the defense.

Not for the offense.

While Venables has focused on the OU defense, he’s also hired two of the worst offensive coordinators in recent memory — at least since Blake’s three-year tenure — in Seth Littrell and Ben Arbuckle.

Two years ago, Venables said of Littrell, “I hired the wrong guy.”

He’ll have to admit that same sentiment soon on Arbuckle or the fan revolt will continue to grow. Pitchforks and torches against him will multiply.

Half-empty stadiums, disgruntled boosters and fans booing and chanting “fire Arbuckle!” after every offensive possession is definitely not the standard at OU.

Arbuckle isn’t the scapegoat here. He’s merely the latest bad hire by Venables, the young, up-and-coming, two-color-pen hotshot whose offense (and whose hand-picked quarterback) simply isn’t suited for SEC football.

But Arbuckle and John Mateer and opinions on any other quarterbacks are topics should be saved for future columns.

Speaking of quarterbacks, what about LaNorris Sellers? Now that’s the standard at Oklahoma. That’s the kind of QB they build statues for in Norman.

The way Sellers led the Gamecocks on soggy Owen Field — 30-yard runs, 80-yard touchdown passes, one escape after another after another — was like Halloween monster Michael Myers carving up Haddonfield. Just when Venables’ defense thought they had him down, he gets up, swings his machete and rips out their hearts.

Since Venables returned, Dillon Gabriel was the closest thing OU has had to Sellers. Even a can't miss 5-star QB prospect had it rough at Oklahoma.

“But hey, that’s OK. This is the era of great OU defense, right?”

It was. Until Sellers sharpened his blade and developed supernatural powers.

Venables’ defense gave up 521 total yards on Saturday night— the most since Texas had 527 in 2023.

But the Gamecocks had 504 yards with more than 10 minutes left in the game. This thing could have been much, much worse.

The OU defense did finally show up in the fourth quarter — when the score was 42-16.

And that’s not a shot at the Sooner defense. Week after week, those guys have played like 300 Spartans holding the beach against an unstoppable onslaught. That they finally collapsed on this day, against this quarterback, is hardly an indictment of their heart or their talent.

Great defense travels. Great defense can win championships. But not when the offense continues to be historically bad like this.

Venables must address that immediately or face the consequences. Maybe both should happen.

OU has now lost back-to-back home games for the second time in three years under Venables. That happened one time in 16 seasons under Bob Stoops.

It was also Venables’ 12th loss by double digits. He’s now 35-24 as a head coach, a .593 winning percentage that puts him alongside the likes of Jim Mackenzie, Snorter Luster and Biff Jones.

Not the standard.

When Venables’ plane landed at Westheimer Airport almost six years ago now, Sooner Nation cheered. Loudly, and for a long time.

He was a conquering hero, and all he’d really done is help Stoops build an enduring era of championships at OU from 1999-2011, and then do the same thing for Dabo Swinney at Clemson, and then agree to clean things up in Norman after Lincoln Riley’s ignominious departure.

“No more sweating out a 51-48 win or coughing up 17-point leads in a playoff semifinal because the defense can’t stop a nosebleed. This era of OU football is going to be different. This is going to be all about the defense. A 20-17 win will be just fine.”

If only this Sooner offense could score 20 points.

In eight games now, OU has scored 20 total touchdowns. That includes two from the defense and two from the special teams.

Sixteen offensive touchdowns in eight games is clearly not the standard at Oklahoma.

Again, nobody wants this.

Venables is a good man. More than a good man. He’s an amazing person. Tremendous father, incredible husband. He’s clearly an inspiring leader. And the wiring in his brain when it comes to cooking up elite defense is rare in college football.

These are indisputable facts.

He’s also a lovable personality. Literally, you can’t dislike the man. You can say he’s not head coaching material, that he’s in over his head as a blue blood CEO, or whatever. But when you meet him, his fiery eyes, his blinding smile and his engaging presence drag you in. You feel like his friend.

Even the media.

When Venables was Stoops’ defensive coordinator, after another long, hot (or cold) practice, he would pop into the old Red Room, stuffed with nosy beat writers and curious cameras, and ask if we needed anything. Every week. Without fail.

And then, every week, without fail, he would enthrall the skeptics, win over the doubters and eventually enlist even the stodgiest, most disagreeable of us.

Venables would regale us with stories of Bill Snyder’s legendary lack of appetite, or Mike Leach’s spilled coffee, or Mark Mangino’s quick temper, or something about the noodles that Curtis Loftin had for lunch or maybe how losing Austin Box left him in an emotional shell.

Frequently, Venables would stay with the media stragglers after dark, laughing and joking and telling more stories, revealing the man behind the coach.

That’s why nobody wanted to write this column. Least of all me.

But it has become painfully clear that if Oklahoma fans want to chase championships again, they’re going to have to demand more from the head coach.

If that means a change at the top, then that’s what it means. The final game of another awful season would be a painful but appropriate end.

Because the standard — the Oklahoma standard — is the standard.

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