How Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables Now Shifts Focus to His Game Week Debut

The Sooners' first-time head coach has been focused on program-building, recruiting and practicing, but now he's approaching the structure and procedures of actual game prep.

NORMAN — Brent Venables is three days away from his very first game week as a head football coach.

After two more practices Friday and Saturday, the Sooners report back from their scheduled day off on Sunday, and then they’ll officially be in game prep for UTEP next Saturday.

Venables has a deep well of knowledge from which to draw, and he’s trying to prepare for every scenario — but you can tell he’s still a little nervous.

Brent Venables :: John E. Hoover / AllSooners

“We’ll get our guys to have a level of comfort for what to expect around the corner,” Venables said after practice Thursday night. “So we’ll do that tomorrow, everything from team hotel to champion walk to gameday simulation. So we’ll work on that. Halftime, how we single the alma mater, all those things will be rehearsed before we get there next week.

“And there will be plenty of things that happen and you’re like, ‘Man, wish I woulda thought of that.’ You just learn and you grow, you know? You’re no different than a player. I’m a freshman. Right? And I gotta grow up quick.”

Being around Dabo Swinney at Clemson for the previous decade, and Bob Stoops at OU for the 13 years before that, gave him a foundation of knowledge. He knows what the organization and structure and procedures should look like.

But he’s never actually done it himself.

Venables said “you have to” project what he gleaned from Swinney, Stoops and even maybe a little Bill Snyder over the years.

“As I had a meeting with our athletic director — we meet once a week — and I told him today, you kind of go through it that first time,” Venables said. “At the end of the day, you’ve got a script, you’ve got a schedule and you try to be detail-oriented. But you gotta go through it, too. And until you do, it’s never the same. So we’ll try to do that like we do everything else.”

Venables focus thus far has been split between program-building and recruiting and practice.

Now he has to navigate literally the most pressing issue a coach faces: how to best get through a game week. There is no room for mistakes now. The real focus, he said, has been on the daily grind of preseason camp.

“Probably just to be how we practice,” he said. “Make sure that, again, we don’t crescendo too soon, that we don’t peak at the wrong time. That we understand that you gotta strain ‘em, you gotta get in shape, you gotta build endurance, and develop a toughness and an attitude, but you also gotta get your guys to a point where they’re fresh and healthy so we can play fast and be explosive. So managing that, what you feel, instincts, what your eyes tell you, is a big part of that.”