Column: Here's How Oklahoma's Brent Venables Got Better as a Head Coach

NORMAN — Year 4 at Oklahoma officially kicks off for Brent Venables on Thursday.

As Venables, 54, comes armed with a 22-17 record as a head coach (0-3 in bowl games), Wednesday — OU Football Media Day — seemed like a good time to ask him how he’s improved as a head coach since 2022 and what he still wants to get better at.

“Probably get better at everything,” Venables said. “I’d probably say that had we gone 16-0. I think there’s room to grow and improve every year, despite success or failure.”

Venables’ early priority was to surround himself with good people and talented coaches. He did that — again — when he hired his third offensive coordinator in three years, landing Ben Arbuckle from Washington State. He also added old chum and offensive sage Kevin Wilson as an analyst.

“I really feel good about the major change we had, and that’s change at offensive coordinator,” Venables said. “When we realized that we had things we needed to change, making those hard, tough decisions at a tough time — we showed we were willing to do that. And that’s what the players deserve.”

We’re not here to pile on Seth Littrell as offensive coordinator — we’ll let Venables’ comments from last November do that, when Venables said he “hired the wrong guy. It obviously wasn't the right guy. That's not centered on Seth. I failed, and I own that. That's not earth-shattering news.”

Littrell seemed like a good hire at the time, at worst a “safe” hire to bring back a former Sooner, an Oklahoma native, who’s also been a Power 4 offensive coordinator and a Division I head coach.

But Venables got better as a coach last season when he realized that Littrell’s play-calling and game preparation was not helping the OU offense. Just like in the 2024 offseason, when he acknowledged linebacker coach and defensive coordinator Ted Roof wasn’t an ideal fit to call his defense, so he let Roof go.

Zac Alley took the OU defense to another level, but then he stunned everyone and went to West Virginia. So Venables got better as a head coach again when he brought in two new linebacker coaches: up-and-coming Nate Dreiling and former Clemson aide Wes Goodwin.

Without having coached a game or even a single preseason practice yet, Venables gets an A+ for those hires.

But Venables hasn’t stopped there. With changes coming at him from above and below, Venables has tried to stay focused on the coming 2025 season and the gauntlet of a schedule.

First, Venables and Joe Castiglione brought in Jim Nagy as the Sooners’ new general manager, then Joe C announced his retirement, and then new “Chair of Football” Randall Stephenson put together a 12-person search committee to find Castiglione’s replacement — the person who in three months might very well be tasked with deciding if Venables has done enough in 2025 to keep his job.

Meanwhile, Venables endured the tumult of local 5-star defensive tackle David Stone hopping in the transfer portal after just one season in Crimson and Cream — only to hop back out again just two days later. His quarterback (Jackson Arnold) transferred to Auburn, a bunch of wide receivers went straight from the athletic training room to the portal (and several landed in the SEC), the Sooners hired a new athletic trainer and have taken a deep dive on the OU medical staff and injury rehab team — all while dozens of players left and dozens more came in.

“You look at everything in your program,” Venables said. “You evaluate it: yourself, your coaches, players, roster, all your internal programming that you do. And how you can get better. Every season, the challenges are a little bit different. And so you evaluate it on those things, what the DNA is of the new team heading into the next season and the out of season and things of that nature.

“This is a new season and you learn and grow from everything, both good and bad. We feel like we have addressed a lot of things that jump out to you right away. There’s roster issues that you’re always looking at. I really felt like we had a good roster. We know we had some areas where we were inexperienced and maybe not quite up to where we’ve been in the past, particularly the offensive line a year ago. So you try to get guys better. You try to protect them where you can and not ask them to do certain things.

“Certainly, getting into the SEC last year, the margin for error was very small. And with the influx of injuries really exposed some areas where guys were maybe inexperienced or not ready to play yet. And I think the test of time will tell.”

Ultimately, Venables will be judged as a head coach by how many games the Sooners win this year — against arguably the most difficult schedule in college football.

Six regular-season wins probably won’t cut it. Seven might be the floor. Eight is an improvement, certainly in the context of the schedule. Nine would make a lot of people happy. There have even been some forecasters who picked Oklahoma to win 10 games this year.

Maybe that’s a stretch. Maybe it’s just a “hot take” to get clicks. Or maybe, if John Mateer and Jaydn Ott stay healthy and the offensive line is drastically better, and the wide receiver two-deep actually makes it the Saturdays, it’s actually realistic.

“I’m really excited with this football team,” Venables said. “And that’s really where all the energy and the focus has been since the end of last season. It’s what we’ve got to do to enhance this roster, strengthen our locker room with the players that we retained and looking at this roster and what we wanted to do from an improvement and development standpoint — strength and conditioning, sports science, those types of things.

“Really excited about the improvements that we’ve made, the acquisitions that we’ve made. … It’s a better overall roster from where we were a year ago. And the test of time will tell where this team stands.”