Brent Venables Makes Some Absurd Comments About Oklahoma Football Program

The head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners might be looking to make some excuses for the current state of his program. 

Brent Venables, who took over in Norman after the 2021 season after an outstanding stint as the defensive coordinator for the Clemson Tigers, hasn't exactly had the best start to his tenure. Oklahoma was a disastrous 6-7 in 2022, including a woeful 3-6 record in the Big 12 Conference. 

There was an improvement in 2023 to 10-2 in the regular season, and the Sooners did beat the Texas Longhorns, but didn't have a single other win over a ranked team, lost to the Kansas Jayhawks, lost to Oklahoma State, and finished out the season by losing in the Alamo Bowl to the Arizona Wildcats. Despite an impressive upset win over Alabama in 2024, Oklahoma went just 2-6 in its first season in the SEC and closed the year with a loss in a bowl game to Navy to finish 6-7 overall.

After Lincoln Riley went 55-10 as Oklahoma head coach, Venables started his Sooners career by going 22-17. And while Oklahoma has the talent to compete in 2025, and enters the season ranked a surprising 18th in the preseason AP Poll, there are a ton of questions surrounding the program. Questions that Venables is now facing, and not answering well. Or accurately.

Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables on the sideline of a game during the 2023 college football season. (Photo by Steven Branscombe/Getty Images)

Brent Venables Says Oklahoma Culture Was A Disaster After Lincoln Riley Era

Venables in a recent press conference told reporters he had to rebuild the culture of the Oklahoma football program after taking over after the 2021 season. 

"We had a lot to work through," Venables said. "I chose not to ask anyone to leave when I first got here. Let me give everybody a fair shot and just kind of see where we’re at. Through time, some players chose to leave, some players just weren’t fitting the bill when it came to going to class and living right off the field. As a football program, we had a lot of issues the first year.

"You know, as a football program, we we had a lot of issues the first year, and we had guys weren’t going to class," he continued. "We had a 2.2 team GPA, and a lot of guys that didn’t pass drug tests a lot. And so what comes with that, you know, lack of motivation, lack of synergy, lack of ambition. And so we had, and there were some, you know, broken spirits too, and guys that maybe weren’t confident on what we could become. So, you know, changing the mindset and how we thought (was the way to go)."

The comments about the state of the program, academically, are confusing. Not just because a GPA that low would have certainly been news at the time considering the risk of failing to meet NCAA academic rules, but because the Oklahoma Twitter account bragged about their academic success just 10 days before Riley went.

"Program record 31 Academic All-Big 12 honorees," the post reads, "including 5 with a perfect 4.0 [GPA], most in the league."

So the culture was a disaster. Children were skipping class, failing drug tests, and the team had a 2.2 GPA, all while 31 players were on the academic All-Big 12 team? And they had the most 4.0 students of any program in the conference?

Doesn't seem to make sense, does it?

What does make sense is that the team was likely disappointed and upset that Riley had gone to USC, and Venables has a different style of leadership and coaching than Riley does. And unfortunately, his team in Norman hasn't gone the way he, or the program, hoped. So he's looking for explanations as to why it's been so disappointing. 

They're just inaccurate ones.