Oklahoma's Brent Venables Hears Criticism, But Players Shouldn't Allow Themselves To

Whether the Sooners were 9-0 or 5-4, the players should avoid falling into the trap of believing the things that are written and said about them and stick to the process.

NORMAN — Brent Venables hears the noise. All of it.

Whether it’s fans talking down on his defensive coordinator or media offering up suggestions on his defensive front or former quarterbacks-turned-podcasters assessing the value of the 2022 season, Venables said Tuesday he hears it.

Do his players?

“You’d have to ask them,” Venables said.

“I pay attention to what's being said, or the opinions,” he said. “And that's what you all get paid to do. To go really high with everybody or really down here and get the clickbaits and all that kind of stuff. That's what you do. Whether it's intentional or not. Because I've know some people say, 'Oh, the season's over. It's forgotten.' But those guys in that locker room don't think that. Those coaches don't think that. If that's the case, why don't you just end it now? You know what I mean?”

Venables offered that after a question about what he learned from Bob Stoops during the challenging 2005 and 2009 seasons.

Asked later if the criticism affected the way his players prepare or practice or even feel about themselves, Venables at first didn’t seem to want to address it further.

But he did.

“Are they affected by that? If they allow themselves to be,” he said. “You know, I'm not naive. Again, I know how the human being works. And my job is to be aware of all of it and then make sure that I do a good job as a leader, of making sure the rest of the leaders — I’m just one man — but the rest of the leaders are also armoring up as well.

“Whether you’re 9-0 or 5-4. The journey is hard. It's difficult. It's challenging. It's going to have its mountaintop experiences within the season, and it's going to be some tough moments, like when we went to Dallas. And how you handle all of it matters moving forward — in the present moment, and certainly in the future.”

If the Sooners were 9-0 instead of 5-4 he said, he would feel the same way.

“If you if you know me at all, if you’ve done any kind of homework, then you're gonna know I'm the same guy every single day,” Venables said. “I’ve already talked about the seeds of success, how that can be a detriment, too. Where people feel like it's, you know, they inherit the right to be successful. Whether it's a program, whether it's coaches, whether it's support staff or whether it's the players.

“Maybe it's you've been very successful as a program and you start recruiting and these guys think they're just gonna show up and win, it's all about them, and they're the new hotshot recruit. The things that it takes to be successful over the long haul, I think, is what it's all about. So you gotta value the little things that it takes to be successful.

“So would that be the same? Dang right, because everybody will be way up here. Either way down here, as low as it can be here, or way up here. Nothing in between. And for me, I want our program to always be right here (in between). How we do what we do. You know? Don't play to a scoreboard. Play and compete to a standard. Show up to a standard every single day. Doesn't matter what happened last week.”

Coming off last week’s 38-35 home loss to Baylor, the Sooners (5-4 overall, 2-4 Big 12) are 7.5-point favorite this week at West Virginia, an 11 a.m. kickoff on FS1. The Mountaineers (3-6, 1-5) are hoping to bounce back from last week’s 31-14 loss at Iowa State.

None of that matters — not when it’s the same West Virginia team that beat Baylor 43-40 just a few weeks ago.

Venables said this OU team can’t focus on last week.

“It’s always about what's next,” he said. “You learn and grow from what happened in the past, but you can't stay fixated on that. It'll paralyze you. So you want guys to stay hungry or staying driven. You want a program that's never satisfied. That’s always looking for more. That’s always about improvement. Those are foundational things.

“It doesn't mean you're always going to get it. But the intent needs to be there. That's the key. The intent. The work that it takes to get there. Doesn't mean you always get the result. And so, to me, too many people are always (looking at) a result — you know, y’all are gonna write the story based on result (slams papers). It’s based on results. ‘OK, well, here's the bottom line. There's the result.’ OK, to me, that's shallow. Even if you're in a result-driven business, that's not what it's about — to me, and to us, and I think to successful people, long-term successful people.

“It's about all the other stuff. The result is a byproduct of doing everything: being committed, doing all the work, persevering, overcoming, fighting through it, handling success, handling the failure all of it. You got to do that all within a game, you got to do it from week to week, you got to do it from month to month, year to year. And so whether you're 9-0 and in the College Football Playoff talk and everyone wants to talk about you — you know, what if we came out last Tuesday, and they said, “Oklahoma top four!” — you know what? I’d have been fighting like hell against that. Because you hadn't accomplished anything. You know, it takes what it takes. You have to start over again. You know, this week is a season of its own. So whether we're 5-4 or 9-0, you know, there's a process of how you compete and play and perform at a really high level.”