Once 'Johnny Supercoach,' Oklahoma's Brent Venables Returns Having Found Himself

Being away from Norman for a decade gave the Sooners' new skipper a completely different perspective and even humbled him as a coach.

The Brent Venables who left Oklahoma in January 2012 is not the same Brent Venables who returned last week.

Venables learned and grew and evolved in 13 seasons as an OU assistant coach under Bob Stoops. The lessons he soaked in from Bob and Mike Stoops as a player and an assistant at Kansas State shaped Venables’ first stint in Norman.

But getting out of the Stoops nest was necessary for Venables to spread his own coaching wings.

He did that at Clemson under Dabo Swinney.

Brent Venables :: DOUG HOKE/THE OKLAHOMAN-USA TODAY NETWORK

“The last 10 years,” Venables said last week, “I’ve grown more as a coach, as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a dad to my girls, as a believer — all those areas from a holistic standpoint are incredibly important.”

Now, thanks to his patient decade in South Carolina, Venables is more equipped to be a first-time head coach than he’s ever been.

“I think getting out of your comfort zone — and we know in our different professions — is one of the hardest things you can go through,” he said. “So for me, that was a very hard transition.”

Venables had just turned 41 when he left OU. He’ll be 51 next week. A lot of perspective has been gained, particularly on his own family. The college kids you coach stay the same age every year, but Venables watched his own kids add a decade to their lives. Oldest son Jake Venables was 11 when the family left Oklahoma. Now he’s 21.

And then seeing someone other than Bob Stoops or Bill Snyder lead a program gave Venables additional perspective on college football itself. In a big way, it humbled him.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I’m Johnny Supercoach. I’ve got all this incredible pedigree and resume and association and I’m this hot-shot coach. I’m a winner,’ ” Venables said. “And what I learned, at 40 years old, in a very humbling way — you’ve got to start over, and you’ve got to start over with relationships. You can’t bring your street cred with you. You’ve got to earn that. It takes a lot of work, whether that’s with players (or) colleagues. And it also gave me an opportunity to scale everything down and build it from scratch from an Xs and Os standpoint.”

Venables had long been viewed as a hot young assistant who would eventually ascend to a head coaching job. Every year he was at Clemson — adding to his resume, wracking up championships, cashing those $2 million checks — people wondered why he wasn’t getting any jobs.

Never motivated to climb the coaching ladder, Venables instead took it as an opportunity to keep learning from one of the game’s most respected and accomplished figures.

“Coach Swinney is an amazing leader,” Venables said. “He’s got every quality that you would want in a human being. The best man I’ve ever been around. But he pours into his coaches as much as he pours into his players.

“So It’s really in every area that prepared me. Obviously, he equipped me and empowered me and allowed me to do things within the confines of his vision to be a leader and inspire and challenge and to grow and to compete.”

Equipped with 2 1/2 decades of experience and leadership and having apprenticed under some of the game’s best, Venables now feels equipped to lead a college football blue blood.

“Again, you just go down that checklist of all the areas that I’ve grown,” he said, “and you know, just a lot of wisdom. Again, I think the biggest thing is you leave and get away from home, you’ve got to really find yourself.”