Brent Venables addresses Oklahoma's key goals during preseason camp

This offseason, the Oklahoma Sooners experienced a significant turnover at several key positions throughout their football team and coaching staff. One of the most significant changes was hiring former Clemson Tigers defensive coordinator Brent Venables as the team’s new head coach. This is his first head coaching opportunity, which happens to come at one of the premier college football programs. And during a recent interview, the new Sooners had men unveiled his key goals for the team during their preseason camps.

“I would just say to continue to build on the momentum that we had through spring ball and the course of the summer,” said Venables. “We’ve spent, me personally, more time with the players in the summer than I ever have.

“We as a staff… what we decided to do collectively, you gotta split up eight hours a week. So we chose to continue to educate and develop our guys with the X’s and O’s, fundamentals, and things of that nature. So, we spent a little bit more time to try to again continue to create momentum and confidence and those types of things going into the season.”

At Oklahoma, Brent Venables is squarely in the spotlight, and he knows that given his history with the program. The Sooners have been an elite college football program for much of the 21st century. Despite being unable to capture a national championship in the College Football Playoff format, the Sooners have represented the Big 12 four times in the CFP. And in order to keep that level of excellence at Oklahoma, Venables has some strong expectations for his coaching staff.

“It’s very simple in regards to expectations, every day, from a development standpoint improving getting guys again continue to build their confidence, sureness, aggressiveness through the work that we put in. And again, the daily focus of improvement more than anything else.

“Like we talked about at Big 12 Media Days, we have 40 percent of our roster that has never taken a snap in an Oklahoma uniform. So what we can we do to help bridge that gap? A bunch of those guys have a tremendous amount of experience playing college football. So, how can we best utilize that experience?”

As we advance in college football, many expect the transfer portal to play a significant role in how teams are put together. Oklahoma was both positively and negatively impacted by the portal. However, that impact might be more positive than negative.

Along with the transfers, the Sooner also had another solid recruiting class. With all the talent they were able to acquire this offseason, Brent Venables expects his team to be of the blue color variety after completing their fall camp.

“We want a confident, physical, tough, blue-collar work ethic type team coming out of your camp. I want our guys to be incredibly confident through the work that we put in over the last several months… Again our job is to bring them out better prepared than when we went into fall camp. And so a lot of intentionalities that goes into that.”