From Bob Stoops to Ben Arbuckle, Oklahoma's Brent Venables Has Grown Into His Own Man as a Coach

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On Thursday, Brent Venables turns 55 years old.

On Friday, his Oklahoma Sooners line up for a College Football Playoff game against the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Happy birthday, coach. Enjoy the cake, and here’s the most important game of your life.

Just four years into his head coaching career, Venables is only two years younger than his mentor Bob Stoops was when Stoops retired (the first time).

Stoops, who stepped down Monday as head coach of the UFL’s Dallas Renegades, coached his last college game in 2017 at the age of 57.

Now Venables steps into the biggest game of his career on Friday when the Sooners host Bama in the CFP.

The 2015 season was Stoops’ only foray into the College Football Playoff, and his Sooners were thoroughly beaten — by Venables, who was then defensive coordinator at Clemson. The Tigers ended OU’s season with a 37-17 beatdown.

The next time their coaching paths crossed, 2021, Venables had just been hired to replace the man who replaced Stoops — Lincoln Riley. For that Alamo Bowl game in San Antonio, Riley had just defected to the West Coast a week earlier and Stoops came back to coach the Sooners one more time — and picked up a 47-32 victory over Oregon.

Then Stoops passed the visor on to his protégée and rode off in the general direction of retirement.

Nobody knows quite like Stoops the burden that Venables faces as the man in the big office inside the Switzer Center — the office Stoops never actually got to sit in as head coach, the same office Venables walked into on his first day on the job and asked, “Who’s museum is this? Who lives here?”

Venables is famous for coaching, but that’s just his job, he said.

He is a devoted family man. He married longtime sweetheart Julie Fisher in 1997. Oldest son Jake was born in Norman in January 2000. Two years later, Tyler came into the world. Daughters Laney and Addie came along in 2008 and 2009. He’s also a devout Christian, he confirmed again on Monday.

“My purpose is not attached to the head coach at Oklahoma,” Venables said. “Best title I’ve got is as a dad and a husband and then a believer. So I keep things in their rightful place. I put everything I got into everything I do. I love what I do.”

Simply put, Venables is a genius defensive mind, a coaching savant. He’s probably forgotten more about defense this morning than most coaches will ever know in their careers.

But three years into his tenure as a head coach, Venables’ OU teams had posted two losing seasons and a record of just 22 wins and 16 losses. Sooner Nation — spoiled by generations of championship success — was deeply divided over his ability to run a blue blood program like Oklahoma.

Venables has experienced numerous setbacks in his short time as a head coach.

The Sooners lost five one-possession games in 2022 — several of which could have used better coaching — and finished 6-7. Much of that season can be attributed to the shape in which Riley and defensive coordinator Alex Grinch left the program — especially the defense.

“We weren’t very deep anywhere,” Venables said Monday. “ … We just ran out of gas in the fourth quarter that season.”

OU lost just two games in the regular season in 2023, but both were big upsets fueled by more coaching blunders — 15-yard penalties against the Sooner coaching staff that kept alive drives by both Kansas and Oklahoma State were absolutely damning. At the end of that game in Stillwater, offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby called for a 2-yard pass on fourth-and-5 to ensure the Sooners would lose their final Bedlam game.

“The fourth down play,” Venables said two days later, “we probably got a whole Rolodex of maybe some plays that are better than that play.”

Venables’ program took a major step back in 2024 with another 6-7 record as Venables hired the wrong offensive coordinator (Seth Littrell) and backed the wrong quarterback (Jackson Arnold).

Meanwhile, Dillon Gabriel transferred away, led Oregon to the College Football Playoff and was named Big Ten Offensive Player of The Year. Now he's starting in the NFL while Arnold transferred to Auburn and was demoted again.

Those were just the big blunders. But it seems like Venables has learned from all those mistakes.

Oklahoma coaches still occasionally get sideline warnings for being too far on the field, but he and his staff haven’t been hit with a 15-yard infraction since that gray day in Stillwater. He hired a crackerjack special teams coordinator in Doug Deakin, and brought in a couple of superstars to coach linebacker after Zac Alley’s odd decision to go to West Virginia. And although his new offensive coordinator has been widely panned as the OU offense has struggled again in 2025, Ben Arbuckle does feel like the right man for the job.

Arbuckle has worked for Venables for all of 54 weeks now, but he deeply admires the inner qualities of the man who hired him from Washington State.

“His unwavering leadership, his unwavering standard and his unwavering commitment to being great,” Arbuckle said Monday. “Those three things right there. He lives it every single day in everything that he does, and it’s not hard to see. You just have to have your eyes open and you see it.

“He’s an incredible example of what being a leader is, battling through adversity, putting his head down, working and ultimately getting an entire team and an entire program pulling the rope in the same direction. He’s an incredible motivator and has everybody believing like no one I’ve ever seen. That’s what I appreciate about Coach Venables.”

Coaches appreciate what Venables stands for as a coach and as a man. So do players.

“The brotherhood isn’t like this at a lot of places,” said senior linebacker Kendal Daniels, who played three years at Oklahoma State — including that 2023 Bedlam upset — before transferring to OU this past offseason.

Remember 2022? Five games went into the fourth quarter, and OU lost all five of those games by a touchdown or less.

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Well, Oklahoma has turned the corner this season under Venables by winning those close games: 24-13 against Michigan, 24-17 against Auburn, 33-27 at Tennessee, 23-21 at Alabama, 17-6 against Missouri, 17-13 against LSU. The Sooners made winning plays in the fourth quarter to seize each one of those victories, and a 4-0 November has thrust OU into the playoffs.

Even though he’s a transfer, Daniels is one of the elder statesmen on the roster — a roster that includes 10 fifth-year seniors (or older), nine true seniors and 17 fourth-year juniors. That maturity shows up on gameday, and the retention of many of those players is the reason why OU is winning close games now instead of losing them.

“The grass isn’t greener in a lot of places,” Daniels said. “You go somewhere and you’re just another number. Being raised in this type of defense with Coach Venables, he cares about you as a human. I feel like that played a part in some of the guys staying, and they trusted the process. When it wasn't good for them in 2022 because Coach Venables had just got there. But they trusted him and it played out good for everybody that stayed.”

Maybe most impressive of all, Venables has become a better head coach this year as he has returned to being a defensive coordinator.

Of the dozen or so head coaches nominated for national coach of the year awards ahead of Venables, who among them has stepped back to assume coordinator duties and built that unit into arguably the nation’s best while also becoming a better head coach?

It’s as if Venables got better simply by recognizing his own professional shortcomings and addressing them head-on: one, he hired the right men to run the offense and the special teams, then two, he returned to his comfort zone by taking over the defense.

Four years. Two losing records. Two 10-win seasons. Venables the Coach has been through some intense highs and some crushing lows.

“The snapshot you just described is — that’s what everybody’s life looks like, in some way, shape or form,” he said. “Maybe not up here (where you) fail up in front of the world. What you just said? That’s life. ‘Oh, the coach at Oklahoma’ — I don’t mind to be judged in front of people and failing in front of the world.

“I’ve been in this profession for a long time. I’ve said what the game of football has meant to me — it saved my life. The coaches in my life have changed me and shaped me and developed me and given me this amazing opportunity that I have here standing before you today. I would not be here if it were not for people like Bob Stoops, Bill Snyder, Dabo Swinney, Jim Leavitt, Mike Stoops, Mark Mangino. So many people who poured into me and saw something in me before I could see it in myself.”

Bob Stoops Brent Venables Oklahoma Sooner — Oklahoma Sooners interim head coach Bob Stoops trades hats with incoming Sooners coach Brent Venables after the 2021 Alamo Bowl victory over Oregon. | Daniel Dunn-Imagn Images

Now, Venables is on the cusp of doing something Stoops never did at Oklahoma, something Riley never did: winning a College Football Playoff game.

It’s a tall task. While some oddsmakers have installed OU as a 1- to 1 1/2-point favorite (per MGM), many still favor the Crimson Tide by 1 1/2 (FanDuel, DraftKings). OU won by two points in Tuscaloosa a month ago, and although this one is in Norman, everyone knows it’s not easy to sweep a good football team.

But no matter what happens Friday, win or lose, Venables will cling to his roots. He’ll prepare with maniacal intensity, he’ll coach with a boundless energy. At some point, he’ll find his center, his inner peace, and he’ll step out of that luxurious office with a good game plan.

And Stoops, Swinney, Snyder and all the rest will be right there with him, buried deep in his DNA, guiding him, but also getting out of his way and letting him grow as a coach.

Brent Venables can only be Brent Venables.

“I come from that place,” he said. “I don’t ever get away from that, ever. Daily, I remind myself how grateful I am and I’m in my proper place. Not up here, not down here, I’m just like everybody else when it comes to having a favored life, great opportunity – I play a small part in it, no doubt. ... If I have a crappy attitude, and I have an attitude that goes (up and down), man, I’m gonna live a miserable life. I don’t look at it as the coach, 'How do you handle the highs and lows of being the coach?' It’s just living life. And a lot of people are counting on you.

“I like the good times. I like to be doubted. There’s several people here (in the press) — you’re doing your jobs; you’ve had to say the bad things, too, about us, about me, and that's cool. I don't hold on to it. I remember, but I don't hold on to it. But that just comes with it too, that you sign up for that, the whole ‘Man in the Arena’ thing. And so again, you try to balance everything out and don't live a dysfunctional life when it comes to worrying about what everybody thinks now, because we lost a game.

“Nobody cares more deeply than me, and I carry that heavy burden of wanting people to have pride, that love Oklahoma. And I want my players to walk with their head held high, because, man, they're about the right stuff, and everybody sees that. In how they play, how they compete, how they win, their success. And to represent this program the right way with great, strong character and humility and having a genuine appreciation for their teammates, their college experience, and certainly the jersey they get to wear at the University of Oklahoma.”