Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables Lands His First Hall of Fame Honor

Brent Venables attained a new honor this week — his first hall of fame induction.

The University of Oklahoma head football coach will be inducted into the Garden City Community College Athletics Hall of Fame this year, the school announced.

Venables joins three other inductees who contributed to Broncobuster athletics over the years: basketball star Darrin Hancock, United States Olympic track star Darvis “Doc” Patton, and the 2003 Garden City women’s basketball team.

Venables, 52, played for the Broncbusters in 1989 and 1990 and achieved All-America honors as a sophomore before playing under Bill Snyder for two years at Kansas State and launching his coaching career.

Venables was a small, gritty linebacker out of South High School in Salina, KS, who just wanted to earn a scholarship to K-State, he told Rivals network site TigerIllustrated.com in 2019.

“Going back to the end of my high school days, I had a lot of good, positive influences at school with my coaches and teachers and whatnot,” Venables said. “I ended up going to Garden City Community College on a football scholarship. I came close to walking on at Kansas State out of high school, but I decided to go to Garden City. While I was still in high school, I remember a coach named Bob Stoops showing up. He was at Kansas State under Bill Snyder, and I went there on an official visit. I went to Kansas on an official visit as well. But neither of them offered me a scholarship, just preferred walk-on spots.

“But I remember meeting Bob Stoops for the first time, and man he was just so electric. He just had an amazing presence to him. He was really positive. He was young. He was confident. I just really liked Coach Stoops so much. So even though I went to Garden City, my focus was on getting back to Kansas State and joining Coach Stoops and Coach Snyder and being a part of that turnaround.

“Coming out of Garden City, I had a couple of scholarship offers from Division I-AA schools. My coaches at Garden City were telling me that's what I needed to do, take the money and take advantage of those opportunities.

“But in my mind, I was going to earn a scholarship at Kansas State. I was determined to do that, and my mom was very supportive of me chasing that dream. So I was eventually going to earn a scholarship, and there was no doubt in my mind.”

Venables walked on in Manhattan, then became a starter, got his scholarship and eventually earned All-Big Eight accolades.

“So after a semester of playing for Coach Stoops and Coach Jim Leavitt, my linebackers coach, I went on scholarship,” he said. “That was a great experience in itself, a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that I proved a lot of people wrong.”

Venables has been on a patient track ever since, spending five years as a Wildcats assistant under Snyder, then 13 years as a coordinator or co-coordinator under Stoops at Oklahoma, then 10 years as one of the nation’s most feared coordinators under Dabo Swinney at Clemson.

He received the 2016 Frank Broyles’ Award as the nation’s top assistant coach as he and his defense powered Clemson to their first of two national championships.

“Venables has been one of the best defensive minds in college football for more than two decades,” Garden City athletic director Mike Pilosof said in a press release. “And what’s great is that every story you read about him, it always chronicles his start in Garden City.”

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