Column: Oklahoma's Brent Venables Has Found Joy Through Hard Times Before

The Sooners failed to live up to expectations in 2005 and 2009, but Venables watched those teams come together, win games and achieve something special.

Bob Stoops and Brent Venables / Matthew Emmons-Imagn Images

NORMAN — Now that we know what this Oklahoma team is — severely limited on offense, powered by a fierce defense, nowhere near a playoff contender, and now maybe even taking a more deliberate approach to bowl eligibility — it’s OK to adjust expectations.

If the Sooners go 7-5 this inaugural SEC season and make it to a middling bowl game, head coach Brent Venables will make it a point to find joy in it.

He’s lived it twice before at OU, and had a similar experience at Clemson.

In 2005, OU went 7-4 but won four of its last five games and made it to the Holiday Bowl, where the Sooners beat No. 6-ranked Oregon.

In 2009, OU went 7-5 but won four of its last six and made it to the Sun Bowl, where the Sooners beat No. 19-ranked Stanford.

And in 2014, Clemson went 9-3 but won eight of their last nine and made it to the Russell Athletic Bowl, where the Tigers beat an unranked Oklahoma squad.

“Those were two of my funnest seasons that I coached,” Venables told me Tuesday during his weekly press conference. “The '14 season I was at Clemson was the same.”

The point is simple: not every year can produce a championship — even at a blue blood like Oklahoma. When a season goes sideways, the team can splinter and lose more games, or it can look in the mirror, come together, roll up their sleeves and go back to work. 

“When you look at our schedule, there's nothing easy about it,” Venables said. “But there's nothing that's on the schedule that says we can't we every game. We have to get better. We need to play to our potential.”

When that happens, it can be special. Fighting your way out of a tough situation can often produce the most rewarding results.

“Sometimes when you have to overcome a lot, when things are stacked against you for whatever reasons, it galvanizes you,” Venables said. “There’s a real improvement. There’s a real focused passion and movement that you can feel and lock arms with — one series at a time, one quarter at a time, one game at a time. You can feel it just moving with the purity that you want it to. ‘Let’s focus where your feet are. Let’s put everything you've got into this moment, this week, this game. A season of one. A best-of-one mindset. Win the day. Go 1-0 this week.’ All those things. Some seasons it’s easier to do that than others.” 

At places like Oklahoma, winning eight games is not the standard. To a fan base that expects to win conference titles and contend for the national championship literally every year, 7-5 is a failure.

But to the coaches and players who live those experiences — who fail, fall short, taste the disappointment, and then rally around each other and eventually find success — there comes a deep gratitude and a profound sense of accomplishment.

“You just said, ‘You know what? I know it wasn't what we wanted ultimately, but man, it was satisfying under the circumstances.’ And we did the best with what we got.

“Certainly, nothing was perfect. But man, it was so pure. So good.”

OU’s 2005 season was derailed by youth and inexperience. After playing for the national title in 2003 and 2004, Bob Stoops said the ’05 team had a sense of entitlement — and it showed, as they came in ranked No. 7 but lost the opener at home, 17-10, to Mountain West champ TCU. 

That team also lost at UCLA and was blown out by eventual national champion Texas, starting the season 2-3. But Rhett Bomar made a throw to Malcolm Kelly to beat Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium, Jacob Gutierrez had a career game to beat Baylor in overtime, Adrian Peterson returned to win at Nebraska, and the season was back on track. 

“A lot of youth, a lot of inexperience, a lot of first-time guys,” Venables said.

December produced the Sooners’ first Holiday Bowl, so the team spent nearly a week around Christmas in San Diego soaking up the city’s appreciation for having an elite college football brand in town. And after the 2-3 start, the team was grateful for the trip.

Mike Bellotti’s Ducks, on the other hand, came in with a different edge. They went 10-1, lost to an historically good, defending national champ and No. 1-ranked USC, and should have been in the Fiesta Bowl, but were overlooked for both Ohio State and Notre Dame, who both went 9-2.

“In their mind,” Venables said, “they were screwed and had to play us in the Holiday Bowl. They were an excellent team.”

OU won the game 17-14, but the Sooners led 17-7 and had to hold off a Ducks rally. It ended with a defensive stop as linebacker Clint Ingram intercepted Brady Leaf’s final pass at the 9-yard line with 33 seconds left.

“We pick ‘em off on a wheel route,” Venables said with a big smile.

Oklahoma’s 2009 squad also failed to live up to preseason expectations. After coming close to the BCS title game in 2007 and then returning the championship in 2008, the ’09 Sooners opened the year ranked No. 3.

But it was injuries this time, rather than youth, that set the Sooners back. Heisman winner Sam Bradford’s shoulder injury in the opener led to a 14-13 loss to BYU, and OU — a team afflicted by lousy offense but propped up by an elite defense — went on to lose four games by a total of 12 points as the injuries piled up. By midseason, the Sooners were 3-3. 

But they beat Kansas and Kansas State in back-to-back weeks, crushed Texas A&M 65-10 and finished with a 27-0 Bedlam wipeout in the season finale to salvage the season and make it to El Paso for the Sun Bowl.

Stanford — coached by Jim Harbaugh, quarterbacked by Andrew Luck and driven by Heisman runner-up Toby Gerhart (he lost to Alabama’s Mark Ingram in the closest Heisman race ever) — was 8-4 that season with wins over three ranked teams and Notre Dame.

Luck missed the Sun Bowl with a broken finger, and the Cardinal — in its first bowl appearance since 2001 — put even more emphasis on a heavy power run game. 

In addition to Bradford, All-American tight end Jermaine Gresham was lost in the preseason. Offensive linemen Jarvis Jones, Brody Eldridge and eventually Trent Williams went down, as did defenders Tom Wort, DeMarcus Granger and Auston English.

“We found a way,” Venables said. 

“To your point, we had to overcome a lot. And we had to think outside the box. We had to get better as the season went on.” 

Venables has a unique perspective on that bowl game: his youngest daughter Addie was born in Norman while he was in El Paso.

“I remember it for that,” he said with a grin. “ … Addie was born on a day we were at practice. I was at practice, it was snowing with the sun out, so I (got on a video call) with somebody, one of our close family friends, while I watched my — and I'm embarrassed to say it, too — but she came early. Julie couldn't come on the trip per doctor's orders and the baby came early.”

He remembers it for another reason, too: Even without Luck at QB, many expected the Cardinal to win, as 75 percent of the late money came in on Stanford even though OU was favored by as many as 10.

Stanford led at halftime, but the Sooners got 418 yards passing from Landry Jones and three touchdowns from Ryan Broyles as OU took a 31-24 lead into the fourth quarter. Stanford cut it to 31-27 with a field goal early in the fourth, but Venables and his defense repelled the Cardinal’s last three possessions to win it.

Venables said one of the heroes of that game was linebacker Keenan Clayton, a converted safety who would be tasked with holding the edge against a Stanford offense that featured three and four tight ends.

“Keenan was our cheetah and a former high school safety,” Venables said. “Keenan was 6-2, 210 and … (Stanford’s) personnel groups were really big. But he said, ‘Coach, you know I played safety in high school for Sulphur Springs down in Texas?’ And that was the Sunday right after we announced and immediately I was like,’You know, what would it take? Let's put our sam ‘backers and put them at safety. Let's take our defensive ends and put them at sam ‘backer. Let's take our defensive tackles and play them at defensive end.’ And so we constructed that.

“We played (defensive tackle) Gerald McCoy at 5-technique. We played our defensive ends, like Jeremy Beal, we played him at sam linebacker. Because what Stanford was doing, they were taking 310-pound tight ends that were tackles and putting them at tight end in a number 88 jersey and setting edges and destroying people in the run game and in their play passes. And so we did that and we won the game in a really brutal slug fest.”

Venables said beating Harbaugh “kind of added a sweetness to it,” but what really made him happy was being part of a team that fought through adversity and meshed into a close-knit squad that could finish off a season the right way.

He also enjoyed the fact that his defense was on the field at the end to seal the deal in both the Holiday Bowl and the Sun Bowl. 

On the field after both games, Venables ran around like Jim Valvano, smiling, laughing and hugging everyone within arms reach.

It was a testament that even with sky-high expectations and pressure and entitlement and youth and inexperience and crippling injuries, college football can still bring joy fulfillment and can still be fun.

“Absolutely. Great point,” he said. “If it was rewarding for me as a coach, you should ask the players that were a part of it, too.”

It happened again in 2014, as Venables was at Clemson when 5-star quarterback and future first-round pick Dashaun Watson went down in Week 8 with a knee injury. The Tigers had lost two of their first three games, then lost Watson. But they rallied to finish 10-3.

“We were led by a veteran defense,” Venables said. “We had eight seniors and things of that nature and finished in a non-New Year’s Eve bowl game against a really good opponent that we were able to win.”

The Tigers beat Oklahoma 40-6, and they celebrated well into the Orlando night after a promising season had been derailed early.

Now, Venables’ OU team is 4-2 after a stark loss to No. 1-ranked Texas last week. The Sooners have been wracked with much of the same youth and inexperience and injuries and maybe even a little entitlement as an inept offense has been carried by a stout defense.

So many similarities.

And that’s why Venables is determined to get this thing turned around. He desperately wants this team to feel that same joy, that same sense of accomplishment — something he knows they can only achieve if they lock arms, stay together, redouble their efforts, focus on getting better and play for each other.

“That’s always been the challenge of coaching,” Venables said. “Success is the worst teacher. Failure is one of the best opportunities to learn, to grow, to teach, and to get guys to buy in, to create humility, that sometimes guys need to earn the respect of what it takes to be successful. 

“It’s the smallest things, not the biggest things. It’s the smallest things that add up in the end and make a difference, good or bad. The margin between being successful and not being successful is incredibly small. 

“So those seasons were a great example of that.”