Brent Venables Working to Avoid 'Energy Vampires' on the Recruiting Trail at Oklahoma

The new Sooner head coach said he's pleased with OU's positioning on the recruiting trail at Tuesday's Coaches Caravan stop in Amarillo.

AMARILLO, TX — Oklahoma’s recruiting strategy has undergone a facelift.

Brent Venables represents a clear departure from his predecessor in many ways, and the new process for landing elite recruits is no different.

A far cry from the glitz and glamor Lincoln Riley brought to the trail, Venables and his staff are taking a more measured approach.

As a result, the commitments for the Sooners will now come much later in each recruiting cycle, something that is apparently of little concern to Venables, as he expressed when asked about recruiting at the OU Coaches Caravan stop in Amarillo on Tuesday.

“We recently had a couple of commitments,” the new Oklahoma head coach said. “I can’t talk about them, obviously, those are the rules.

“But we got, again, every one of our first-rounders are still sitting out there. We feel really good. We’ve got a great start to this recruiting class in ’23 and ’24, tremendous deep relationships with the ’24 class.”

Currently, the Sooners have five recruits committed for the 2023 cycle. Offensive lineman Joshua Bates has maintained his pledge through the coaching change, and Venables’ staff has added verbal commitments in quarterback Jackson Arnold, wide receiver Ashton Cozart, safety Kaleb Spencer and athlete Erik McCarty.

The early haul is impressive considering that Oklahoma hasn’t even really begun to turn the pressure up on its targets to jump in the boat at this time.

“We’re not going to try and push and rush and force commitments right now, OK? This is early,” Venables told the crowd gathered at the Amarillo Civic Center. “Most young people … Because the recruiting calendar has changed in the last two years and you can now take recruiting visits in the spring, you don’t see near as many commitments that stick early prior to those visits.

“So what you’re going to see is the visits are getting ready to start, and then you can see the dominoes start to fall. So that’ll be late May, June, July. And most, probably 70 percent of the young people will make those life-changing decisions prior to their senior year. So the beginning of August. So sometimes in June and July, most of them, you’re going to start seeing those dominoes fall. And we feel that we’re in a terrific position for the ’23, ’24 and ’25 classes.”

Venables has pulled no punches pertaining to his commitment philosophy either.

If you’re in, you’re in.

A player commitment to Venables’ program means a prospect is done taking visits, and is intent on enrolling in Norman.

The Oklahoma head coach encourages all recruits to take all the visits they want, as he’s not “anti-visit”, he just wants to ensure a commitment lasts.

And while the approach should help prevent decommitments and stunning flips that send the coaching staff into a panic, it will also allow OU all the time it needs to evaluate if each recruit possesses the qualities Venables wants to build his program on.

“I love passion and energy and intensity and guys that love to play the game,” he said. “… I think intensity, passion and enthusiasm is a great equalizer. Guys who love it are going to fight through the tough days.”

Figuring out what guys truly have those traits as opposed to the ones who just project them on social media is the real test of a coach’s recruiting prowess, Venables said.

“You try to figure that out,” he told the crowd. “That’s the key to being a really good recruiter. Through relationships, through the right questions, through multiple opportunities to be around each other and get to know each other.

“So you’re essentially taking your time, not being in a hurry to make sure that you know that you know that you know that you know.”

The core of the philosophy goes back to a mantra Venables rolled out in his introductory press conference last December. The Sooners don’t want to recruit their own problems, whether that means ending up with a player who ends up immediately hitting the transfer portal or helps contribute to any kind of locker room problems.

“People are contagious, good and bad,” Venables said. “I want to make sure we don’t bring in any energy vampires, right? Guys that are always miserable. Something’s always wrong. They always make an excuse.

“… That’s why we don’t want to force a commitment because once they commit, they’re ours. I tell the coaches, don’t have buyer’s remorse. Once you make that decision, it needs to be ’til we graduate.”

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