College Football

Why Brent Venables is perfect choice to replace Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma

Updated Dec. 6, 2021 12:47 a.m. ET

By RJ Young
FOX Sports College Football Writer

Just one week after Lincoln Riley shocked Oklahoma fans and the college football world by accepting the USC coaching job, Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables is headed to Norman.

Venables is set to become the head coach at Oklahoma. In doing so, he reunites with a fan base and an athletic director, Joe Castiglione, a decade after he left the program. Castiglione identified Venables immediately as OU's top candidate to replace Riley.

RJ Young: Oklahoma got its man in Brent Venables

RJ Young reacts to the Oklahoma Sooners announcing the hire of Brent Venables as the head coach to replace Lincoln Riley. "Oklahoma got its man. You should be excited."

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR OKLAHOMA?

Not long after Oklahoma won its first national title in 1950, then-OU President Dr. George Lynn Cross spoke to the state legislature to ask for money to improve the state’s flagship university.

When Cross finished his appeal, having talked for the better part of an hour, one senator piped up.

"Yes, that's all well and good," said the state senator, according to Cross’ book, "Presidents Can’t Punt." "But what kind of football team are we going to have this year?"

"We want to build a university our football team can be proud of," Dr. Cross replied.

The truth is he was only half-joking.

When Riley dropped the bombshell that he was leaving just one day after the regular season ended, one of the first tasks Castiglione and university president Joe Harroz performed was to ask Bob Stoops if he'd coach the team — shepherd it, steady it — while they identified, recruited and signed a new head coach.

Stoops didn't even let the duo finish asking the question. Of course, he would coach the team in the Alamo Bowl against Oregon.

The next day, Stoops, who is a FOX analyst on "Big Noon Kickoff," sat down at a table three-wide for a media conference with Harroz and Castiglione and assured fans not only that this brain trust would find the right coach but also that Oklahoma is bigger than any one man.

He was forceful and direct. He tamped down fears and inspired belief.

"When I arrived here Dec. 1, 1998, there was something to be concerned about," Stoops said. "A lot to be concerned about — four straight years without a winning record, no bowl games. Two years later, we were 13-0 and won the national championship. This place is in a hell of a lot better shape."

Stoops saw this job opening as a chance to find a man who could not just recruit the best players but also pull the best out of them.

"Give it a little bit of time, and you’re going to see this is just a little bump in the road," Stoops said. "There’s not one guy, one person in the history of this program that’s bigger than the program — Coach Switzer, myself or Lincoln Riley. And what I told the players is they are the program. They are OU football."

Castiglione & Co. got their man, and they got the man whose defense gave Riley fits.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR CLEMSON?

In the 2015 Orange Bowl, Venables’ Tigers defense held Riley’s offense, which averaged 530.2 yards and 43.5 points per game, to 378 total yards and 17 points in a resounding win en route to Clemson’s first national title since 1981.

Venables added a third national title to his résumé in 2018. That year, Clemson had six defensive NFL first-round selections, including three defensive linemen.

He has earned a reputation for identifying under-recruited and misevaluated players and turning them into stars.

Linebacker Isaiah Simmons was a lightly recruited three-star athlete when Venables got hold of his film. Some programs had identified the 6-foot-4, 205-pound Simmons as a wide receiver; others as a safety. He was ranked as the 330th player and No. 25 safety in the 2016 class. Venables found him just a week before National Signing Day at Olathe North High School in Olathe, Kansas.

"I literally wrapped my arms all the way around him and hugged him as tight as I could," Venables said. "I was like, 'Oh my god, I'm so glad I showed up to Olathe.' Because I really didn't know. I saw him in the hallway. We just saw a big athlete that had good ball skills that played mostly receiver, little bit of safety."

Venables signed Simmons, took his frame and his ball skills, and turned him into a cutting-edge defender capable of playing on the edge, the middle of the defense, slot corner and both safety positions. Simmons became a Butkus Award winner, a player so good he can make the offense wrong just by changing his alignment at the snap — a destroyer of worlds.

Simmons was the eighth overall pick of the 2020 draft and is now wrecking NFL offenses for the Arizona Cardinals.

Venables' choice to leave Clemson could mean the end of a fantastic era of football in South Carolina. Dabo Swinney’s program grew into a national power in large part because Venables turned down one high-profile job after another.

Under Venables, the Tigers' defense became as feared as any in the country and a stabilizing force, even when the offense sputtered.

RIGHT TIME, RIGHT MAN, RIGHT JOB

There wasn't always the belief that Venables would accept the head coach job at OU if offered.

A native of Salina, Kansas, he played junior college ball at Garden City Community College before earning the opportunity to play linebacker at Kansas State. But when Bill Snyder stepped down, Venables said he wasn't interested in taking the position now held by Chris Klieman.

He did not enjoy the constant uprooting so many coaches put their families through in pursuit of the next job. For example, Alabama coach Nick Saban was an assistant for 10 different teams in the first 20 years of his career.

In July, Venables signed a five-year extension with Clemson, making him the highest-paid assistant in the sport with an annual salary of $2.5 million. It’s clear he never felt underappreciated at Clemson, but perhaps he is harkening back to the feeling that led him to leave OU in the first place.

After the 2011 season, OU went 10-3, but after the defense finished outside the top 50 in the country, Stoops made the decision to bring his brother, Mike Stoops, in as co-defensive coordinator with Venables.

Bob Stoops was simply trying to help Venables strengthen the defense by getting back to a partnership that worked for four years prior to Mike becoming head coach at Arizona. No one was pushing Venables out when he received an offer from Clemson, and he said one of the toughest decisions of his life came at an airport in Oklahoma City, when he needed to decide between coaching in Norman or in Clemson.

"Sometimes you have too much testosterone to admit it, but I was scared for my family," Venables told ESPN in 2015. "I was scared for myself professionally. I was in a comfort zone. It's Oklahoma. That's not a stepping-stone job. To walk away from the only home my children had known, that's really hard."

He chose to chase evolution rather than complacency. He wanted to find out just how good he could be.

"If you're not evolving, you're dying," Venables said. "I really believe that."

Now, in becoming OU head coach just two weeks before his 51st birthday, he is forcing himself to evolve once more. Perhaps with that evolution, Oklahoma can return to heights it hasn’t seen since Venables was last a Sooner.

But hiring a coach such as Venables counts for more than a perennial shot at winning the national championship as OU gets set to join the most competitive league in the sport in just a couple of years. Venables' hiring reflects both the mood and the attitude of Oklahomans and Sooner fans.

They want a tough coach, uncompromising in how he expects his teams to play football, a coach who reflects the core beliefs and values Oklahomans are raised with.

Venables is a noted taskmaster. He's energetic, passionate and precise. He approaches the job with fanatical ferocity. He coaches on edge and teaches his players to play on the edge.

Former OU linebacker Rufus Alexander made plain for me the lengths Venables will go to get himself and his players ready to win games.

"He would have a Red Bull, mixed with a five-hour energy, mixed with a Spark [Energy]," Alexander told me. "He is full-tilt. He is ready to go by the time he gets outside."

Venables keeps that intensity for the entirety of practice. "Where are you supposed to be? Why are you false stepping? If that guy does this, where are your eyes supposed to be?" Alexander added. "So you’re freaking out as a true freshman. That’s the type of energy he had out there."

Venables is a serious kind of man taking on the challenge of coaching at a place where football is not only a sport but also a birthright, built to combat the desperation brought on by the swirling winds of the Dust Bowl and the ravages of tornadoes, floods and the price of oil.

Oklahoma football is a constant in a state constantly belittled and bedraggled by larger neighbors with an NFL or MLB presence. No matter what else might go on in the world, folks in Oklahoma, Sooners, can point to that program, that team, and know pride.

Our hearts are on our sleeves, and the head football coach holds each one in his hand. Because of this, Oklahoma isn’t a place where you want to win. It’s a place where you have to win.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The No. 1 Ranked Show with RJ Young." Follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Young, and subscribe to "The RJ Young Show" on YouTube. He is not on a StepMill.