Brent Venables on waiting to become a head coach: ‘I think these steps have been ordered a long time ago’

NORMAN, Okla. – Brent Venables is talking, and you’d describe it as “All gas, no brakes” if someone in Austin hadn’t gotten to that phrase first. The first-year Oklahoma coach starts a thought and before he finishes it, another comes up and shoves it away from the mic.

If Venables measures his words, it’s by the gross. It’s not just that, like Steve Spurrier (the mentor of Venables’ mentor, Bob Stoops, and thus among Venables’ heroes), there is an express lane from Venables’ brain to his vocal cords. It’s his utter lack of pretense. Venables wears his disinhibition proudly.

“Sometimes, people let their egos get in the way,” Venables said. “Not me.”

He wants you to know that he came from a dysfunctional home; that as a graduate assistant at Kansas State, his alma mater, he asked defensive coordinator Stoops so many questions that Stoops began calling him “Meathead,” later shortened to “Meat”; that when a permanent job on Bill Snyder’s staff came open, Venables knocked on Snyder’s door every day for several weeks until Snyder gave him the job, on an interim basis, for an annual salary of $33,150.

For the record, Stoops, now Legend-in-Residence in Norman, “hasn’t called me ‘Meat’ since I got back,” Venables said with a hearty laugh. “I’m Brent now. ‘Coach V.’ Coach Venables.”

All of this cascaded forth in the 20 minutes that Venables took to answer the first question of the interview. Time is a fluid commodity with Venables, a schedule merely a suggestion. Venables’ 30-minute news conference to launch spring football came in at 58 minutes. Alabama coach Nick Saban famously eats the same thing for lunch every day to save the minutes it would take to pick something else. Venables has made it clear that he doesn’t mind taking longer.

In an era when 34-year-old Lincoln Riley took Oklahoma to a playoff, and 36-year-old Sean McVay won the Super Bowl – on his second try – Venables arrived at the head-coaching party at age 51. He worked as a defensive coordinator at Oklahoma and Clemson for 23 seasons before he became a head coach. Most coordinators who don’t get a head-coaching job after three years fire their agent.

It’s not as if athletic directors and coaching search firms didn’t know who Venables was. He’s never been anything but successful. In 29 seasons as an assistant, he has coached in 47 postseason games. When Venables says, “I don’t know what a losing season looks like,” it’s not hyperbole. It’s fact.

Over nine seasons at Clemson, in which the Tigers reached four College Football Playoff Championship Games and won two, Venables became the best-known, highest-paid ($2.5 million) assistant in the game. According to USA Today, Venables made more money in 2021 than half the FBS head coaches.

And yet. For more than two decades, nearly one in five FBS coaching jobs opened annually and Venables didn’t get a one. How does that happen?

For one thing, Venables didn’t want to be a head coach just to be a head coach. He had the natural antibodies to withstand the ambition virus that runs through the profession. Every December, aspiring head coaches ignore years of evidence that lay out how difficult it is to win at a school and convince themselves that they can do it.

“You can’t just pick what job somebody is going to offer you,” Venables said. “If I’m recruiting a player, I’m recruiting elite talent. Same thing when it (came) to what I would be giving up.”

For another, the scars of an early setback remained tender. In 1998, as a 27-year-old linebacker coach at No. 1 Kansas State, Venables watched the defense fail to protect a 15-point fourth-quarter lead against Texas A&M and lose 36-33 in triple overtime. Nearly a quarter-century later, Venables sees the Wildcats ahead 33-30 and the Aggies facing third-and-17 at K-State’s 32. He sees Aggies running back Sirr Parker racing across the field to the pylon to make the winning touchdown catch.

“I forgot my wife’s birthday one year (2015),” Venables said. “We were getting ready to play Lamar Jackson on a short week. I’m going to Louisville. I forgot her birthday. That was the worst husband in the history of husbands.

“But I didn’t forget 1998, third-and-17, Sirr Parker on the slant route. … It was the most devastating loss. I knew the very fiber of that program and what that program was about and where Coach Snyder had taken it, and we were right there … the greatest turnaround in the history of college football. Be a small part of that. People feel like I let them down.”

Two years later, as a 29-year-old co-coordinator for an Oklahoma team on its way to an improbable BCS championship, Venables got word that Missouri wanted to interview him before the Big 12 Championship Game. He didn’t want to give anyone a reason to think he wasn’t focused on the game that would give the Sooners the chance to play for the national championship. Venables said no thanks.

“This is what I told myself,” Venables said. “I made a promise. I’m going to be convicted and I’m going to be loyal to my players and my coaches and nobody’s going to be able to judge me, win, lose or draw.”

It worked out for Missouri, which hired Gary Pinkel, who in 15 seasons won four division titles, two in the Big 12 and two in the SEC. And it worked out for Venables.

“I just tried not to be in two places at once,” he said, the kid from the broken home loving the stability that came at Oklahoma and then at Clemson.

A few minutes later, he added, “But some of it is, don’t screw up happy. All right? Don’t screw up happy.”

So Venables had his chances to become a head coach. He said no to interviews when he coached at Oklahoma. He said no to interviews when he coached at Clemson. In recent years, he didn’t interview at Texas Tech or Arkansas or Florida State. After the 2020 season, he almost said yes to Auburn. Here came a school with a tradition of winning, with unlimited resources, with the small-town life that he and wife Julie had grown to appreciate as they raised two sons and two daughters. Clemson, it is often said in the South, is Auburn with a lake.

Venables even went to sleep thinking he would say yes.

“I’m sitting on my bed,” Venables said. “We went from the living room to the bedroom. I got both boys, both daughters. My nephews made an appearance. They were living with us, too. My wife. I’m being attacked – ‘What these people are offering, this opportunity, you can’t pass this one up!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, God. Please go away. Leave me alone. It’s kind of a yes right now, but I’m going to sleep on this one.’ ”

When he awoke, he vetoed the family’s unanimous vote to go.

“In my mind, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t feel right about this.’ Just didn’t feel right,” Venables said.

A year later, Riley left Oklahoma for USC. Clemson, for the first time in seven years, did not make the College Football Playoff. No offense to the Cheez-It Bowl and Iowa State, but Venables didn’t have a commitment that would delay him from considering the Oklahoma job.

“I think that’s God’s timing, myself,” Venables said. “I don’t think it’s coincidence. I think these steps have been ordered a long time ago. Not just because it wasn’t a championship. I had this peace not like I’ve had a peace about anything to take this job.”

This was Oklahoma, where he had helped win the first of his three national championships, where he had felt loved for 13 seasons. And even as Venables said yes, his feet got a little chilly.

“I asked my wife, before we left the house for the airport, they’re waiting for us, ‘Are you suuure?’ ”

Julie Venables replied, “I can’t believe you’re still thinking about that!”

And they got on the plane.