Paul Finebaum criticizes Oklahoma for Brent Venables hire effect on recruiting

ESPN personality Paul Finebaum didn’t get where he is today without having a way with words, and he proved that again Sunday when he provided a horribly colorful metaphor for Oklahoma‘s Brent Venables hire and what Saturday’s 49-0 blowout loss to Texas over the weekend did for the program.

Speaking with ESPN’s Matt Barrie on the ESPN College Football YouTube channel, Finebaum unloaded on Venables.

“If this was a Fortune 500 company and you’re early in your career, I mean this is essentially the investor meeting,” Finebaum said. “Essentially Brent Venables went into the stockholders meeting with everybody who owns stock in your company and as he started to address them on what kind of year they’re having he like froze up.

“That’s 49-0 to your biggest and most hated rival, who you’re joining to go to the SEC. So yeah, you can clean up the vomit but it’s hard to get the stench out.”

Finebaum has already been quite critical of Venables’ hire of Ted Roof as defensive coordinator, with the Sooners having given up more than 500 yards in each of the last three games. Last week he called that hire “terrible.”

Saturday’s results didn’t make things much better.

Brent Venables hire already proving shaky for OU?

The bigger issue Finebaum pivoted to coming off Saturday’s 49-0 Texas win was the potential problems it can cause for Venables and his staff in recruiting.

One of the luxuries new coaches often enjoy — and certainly one Oklahoma thought it would enjoy for a while after making the Brent Venables hire — was a bump in recruiting. Early in a coach’s tenure it’s typically easier to sell a vision for the program, regardless of any potential bumps along the road on the field in the first year or two.

Of course, Saturday was more like a train screaming off the tracks than a simple speed bump, Finebaum pointed out.

“This is not about the final score for you newcomers to this podcast,” Finebaum explained. “This is about recruiting right now. And if you’re one of those top players in Dallas or all those premier schools and you’re looking at that team yesterday, at Oklahoma, you’re going, ‘I want to play for that guy?’ Listen, I’m not diminishing Oklahoma. It’s one of the premier schools in the country. But they don’t have one of the premier coaches right now.”

Worse, Texas seems to be heading in the opposite direction under second-year coach Steve Sarkisian.

That only ratchets up the pressure Venables is feeling, further eroding that seemingly standard recruiting benefit early in a coaching tenure. Especially with both programs about to launch new recruiting pitches as the two powerhouses prepare to jump to a new conference.

“And that’s your drafting partner to the SEC, which I do believe will happen in ’24, so that’s not a long way off anymore,” Finebaum said. “We’re one more season. And Sark won the game he had to win and he almost beat Alabama.”