Brent Venables Hopes Oklahoma Can 'Respond to Success' Against Temple

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables doesn’t have to look back very far for a good history lesson for his 2025 football team.

OU is suddenly the flavor of the week after dominating Michigan 24-13 on Saturday night in Norman. A national television audience — worked up a bit by the Sooners’ hosting ESPN’s “College Gameday” that morning — watched a good battle between historic programs that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score.

Oklahoma rose five spots in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll, now at No. 13. Quarterback John Mateer is a Heisman “frontrunner.” Venables’ defense is drawing praise from around the country.

Starting with this week’s game at Temple, where OU is a 24 1/2-point favorite, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, the Sooners are 2-0 and would seem to have a decent shot at being undefeated going into the Texas game for the first time since 2023.

But it’s that very game — a 34-30 victory over the Longhorns — that Venables must now use as a teaching tool post-Michigan.

Venables has acknowledged that the ’23 Sooners didn’t handle success very well. After Dillon Gabriel’s game-winning pass and Danny Stutsman’s postgame cigar and all the hype that followed, the Sooners staggered through a 31-29 home win over newly promoted Big 12 member Central Florida, then suffered a 38-33 loss at Kansas and a 27-24 loss at Oklahoma State.

OU was favored in both road contests and had a late lead both times, but wilted in the end.

That came up again on Saturday night.

“Coach was talking about two years ago,” Mateer said Saturday night, “there was a big win they took too long to get over — I don’t really know what he’s talking about, I wasn’t here; was it the Texas game? That’s what I thought it was. But I mean, it’s true.

"I won big game last year, a couple big games, and you’ve gotta come back and get after it. How you respond to success shows who you are as a man.”

That OU team finished the regular season 10-2 — unbeaten but for the disappointments against the Jayhawks and Cowboys — but it wasn’t enough to play for a Big 12 Championship, and it wasn’t enough to land in the College Football Playoff.

On his weekly coaches show Monday night, Venables was asked specifically about how that team two years ago responded to success against Texas.

“The bottom line is this,” he said. “We finished 10-2 in the regular season. We lost three games that year. “We had 12 turnovers in those three games — 12, not like four. Twelve! And three defensive touchdowns given up the first drive of the game against Kansas. We gave up a pick-six, and then we had three turnovers against Oklahoma State, and we had xix turnovers in our bowl game (loss to Arizona), two defensive touchdowns in the bowl game. So you're not going to win very many games if you're on the wrong side of the turnover margin, period.

Venables has talked in the past about responding to success can be as difficult — and rewarding — as responding to failure.

“Point being is that, you know, we need to play to our ability, stay humble, stay hungry,” he said. “You know, go to work and get better as the year goes on. And again, develop a rhythm and a tempo to the season where there should be a crescendo at the end of the year (and) you're playing your best ball.

"This is a game of doing, of executing," Venables said. "Not what's on paper."

On Saturday night, Venables said he liked how his team responded to both good times and bad against the Wolverines.

“You learn a lot when you're challenged and your back's against the wall,” Venables said after the game.

“I told the guys, man, you didn't have to play perfect (against Michigan). We've been saying that you don't have to play perfect to win. And sometimes … you put pressure on yourself where you feel like ‘I have to play perfect to win,’ and we've preached that a lot.

”Having some success lends credibility to the process — how we practice, how we meet. … Not have doubt. Think the right way, and believe in yourself, believe in your opportunity, believe in your teammates, believe in how we practice, how we meet, all of those kinds of things. And again, you have a lot of different types of challenges along the way in front of us, we know that. But again, I think that's obviously a step in the right direction.”