Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables: 'We Could Win Every Game, We Could Lose Every Game'

The Sooners' head coach described a respect for the process of winning and being able to focus when things are at their most chaotic.

NORMAN — Oklahoma coach Brent Venables surveys the rest of the Sooners’ schedule and is as honest as he can be.

“We could win every game,” Venables said. “We could certainly lose every game.”

Venables and the Sooners (4-3 overall, 1-3 Big 12 Conference) hit the road Saturday for a morning game at Iowa State.

The Cyclones (3-4, 0-4) have the league’s fiercest defense and their four defeats are by 14 points combined, but Venables remains unyielding.

“We’re gonna get everybody’s A game,” he said Tuesday during his weekly news conference. “Every single body that we play. That’s just the way it is.

“We got everything we need,” he said. “That’s what I know.”

It’s been tough to find the floor in the Big 12 this fall. When the team at the bottom of the standings casts fear like Iowa State — a team whose strengths are defense and football fundamentals — there are no easy weekends.

Most years, OU is a heavy favorite in a game like this. That doesn’t apply in 2022, and while that may be maddening to the fan base, Venables embraces it.

“That's the game of football,” Venables said. “You can't cheat this game. This game will reward you for precision, for your work, for your grind. What you do in the dark. It will reward you for that. It'll punish you for mistakes.

“Whether we're 6-0, I probably would say the same thing.”

A classic example came at this time last year, when Lincoln Riley chose to deal with a run of injuries by giving the team a day off instead of practicing the Monday before the Kansas game. At halftime of that game, the Sooners trailed 10-0 and needed two huge plays in the fourth quarter to hold on to a win.

Venables said he’s been lucky in his career to be part of coaching staffs that focused on “respecting the game, respecting what it takes to prepare to play well, to play consistently — you know, all the little things, perspective and mindset of an opponent, be competing to a standard every single day and learning, deeply buying into that.

“And if you skip a day, if it's an occasional belief, right, if it's an occasional commitment, then you're going to be exposed.

“This game rewards you for what you do consistently, not what you do occasionally. It doesn't reward you for what everybody else thinks that you could be. It doesn't reward you for your potential. It rewards you for future performance. This is a game of performance. What you do on the field matters. What you do on the practice field matters. What you do in recovery and on the practice field, in the meeting rooms.”

Venables described the ability to find success “amongst the chaos” as a strength. At Oklahoma, a 4-3 record could certainly be described as chaos.

“Say it's Oklahoma or 7-0, right?” he said. “We'd be the talk in college football and everything else. There's still gonna be the chaos going on outside those walls. Here we are, 4-3, and there's whatever chaos is. To me, you gotta have calm over it. To me, the more chaotic it gets, for me personally, the quieter it gets, for whatever reason.

“What we've been through and then what's lying ahead, you know, requires guts. It requires some belief. Requires work. It requires mental toughness. Requires perseverance. None of that is is maddening.”