Misery Index: Oklahoma is surely already regretting Brent Venables' latest contract extension
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The preseason publicity blitz for new Oklahoma athletic director Roger Denny has featured words like "unorthodox" and "radically different" to describe both his background and his modernization of a role that his predecessor, Joe Castiglione, held for nearly three decades.
In a recent feature in the Oklahoman newspaper, school president Joseph Harroz said of his AD pick: "It was very upsetting to the industry for this to happen at a place like Oklahoma. But very quickly, everyone gets it."
A former corporate attorney who jumped into college athletics at Illinois, where he was the department's top deputy administrator for a handful of years, Denny indeed brings a new kind of résumé to the job.
But his decision to extend football coach Brent Venables on the eve of the 2026 football season was a mistake as old as time.
Oklahoma lost at Michigan on Saturday, 17-10, which doesn't seem like such a terrible thing for Venables when stripped of all context. But in this case, the context matters.
A lot.
Because Oklahoma didn't just lose by one score on the road to another blue blood. It lost to a shaky Michigan team whose fan base spent the past week bracing for the bottom to fall out after its supremely lucky win over Western Michigan, prompting coach Kyle Whittingham to publicly suggest that quarterback Bryce Underwood's starting job was in jeopardy.
And Oklahoma didn't lose because it played unusually poor. On the contrary, its performance was consistent with everything we have learned about Venables in his previous four seasons. On offense, the Sooners are still chronically bad. The only surprise Saturday was being bad enough to make Michigan's general ineptitude look like a decent product.
It played out like a nightmare on the game's final sequence: Needing a touchdown with no timeouts and less than a minute to play, quarterback John Mateer somehow ignored the time and score with a 3-yard swing pass well inbounds. Then, with the clock still moving, Oklahoma committed a false-start penalty — which also cost them a 10-second runoff by rule because they didn't have a timeout. And if all that wasn't bad enough, the game ended with one final desultory play: Mateer running around and taking a sack.
"Really disappointed in how things shaped up," Venables said at his postgame news conference. "Lost the turnover margin, didn't tackle great in the first half, seemed like we were penned up inside our 5-yard line the whole day and couldn't get it flipped."
When Venables took over from Lincoln Riley, Oklahoma was good on offense and bad on defense. Now in his fifth year, Venables has the reverse problem. The defense is good enough to win some games (the Sooners did make the College Football Playoff a year ago) but they're not going anywhere unless something changes significantly on offense.
And after extending Venables' contract by two more years at $10.5 million per season through 2031, what incentive does he have to change anything?
Being from outside the college sports bubble may be one of Denny's greatest strengths, but giving a replacement-level head coach a gold-plated contract at a place like Oklahoma is a well-worn path for ADs to lose their credibility with the fan base.
Why the urgency to rip up Venables' old contract before the season? Was Oklahoma concerned some other school was going to try to hire him away?
Prior to the transfer portal era, agents managed to hoodwink ADs into unwarranted extensions because of recruiting. If you didn't have five years left on the contract, recruits would have questions. (Oooooh, scary!)
But nobody cares about that anymore in today’s environment of heavy player movementy. Truly, nothing matters less these days than the length of the coach's contract in the construction of a winning program.
And while Venables has had some good moments, he is 33-21 overall. The last two years against Texas, Oklahoma has gotten beat by a combined score of 57-9. If Oklahoma expects to compete for championships, Venables has not shown he's a coach you absolutely must lock down right now.
Without the contract extension, Venables' job security would absolutely be a viable topic moving forward. Instead, Oklahoma's new AD wasted no time wedding himself to a track record of mediocrity when he truly didn't have to. He better be as innovative as they say to figure a way out of this problem.
That's why Oklahoma reigns as America's most miserable fan base in Week 2.
Conference Champions of Misery
ACC: At this point, we need to hope that Syracuse coach Fran Brown was only joking when he famously said in 2024 that he doesn't shower after losses because, somehow in his mind, personal hygiene should be a reward rather than a requirement. "Winners get washed," he said. That was a cute bit when Syracuse was 10-3 in his first season. Now, with Syracuse losing nine straight ACC games, it just seems unnecessarily rank. The only good news for Syracuse players and assistant coaches is that Saturday's 21-18 loss to California was at home, meaning none of them had to be in Brown's immediate vicinity for very long. But imagine a four-hour, cross-country flight with a coach who didn't take a postgame shower as a personal punishment ritual. To be clear, we don't know if Brown is still committed to this routine. But let's hope he's evolved a bit because playing for Syracuse seems awful enough at the moment.
Big Ten: Oregon's 39-31 loss to Oklahoma State is as perplexing of a result as there's been for quite some time. In his first four seasons, Dan Lanning lost just eight games — all to ranked teams and mostly to championship-level programs. (Oregon lost twice to Indiana in 2025, once to Ohio State in 2024 and twice in 2023 to the Washington team that played in the CFP finals.) So even on the road, it makes little sense for Oregon to play so poorly against an Oklahoma State program that lost to Tulsa in Week 1 and hadn't beaten an FBS opponent since Sept. 14, 2024. Oregon, a popular pick to win the national title, was stunningly unprepared to play, getting outgained 554-281. With a returning quarterback in Dante Moore who would've been a top-three pick if he left for the NFL, that should not happen. Maybe it was a total fluke, maybe there's a deeper issue with roster construction or the coaching staff after losing both coordinators from last season to head coaching jobs. We'll see, but Oregon fans have every right to feel shocked and unsettled about the state of their program after that kind of performance.
Big 12: In Scott Frost's first go-round at UCF, his offense wasn't held under 10 points a single time in 26 games. Since coming back, it's happened three times in 14 games — including Saturday in a 12-7 loss at Pittsburgh. Even more worrisome, it was UCF's eighth loss in its last 10 games against FBS opponents and 10th straight road loss. You can't just chalk this up to changing leagues, either. Since joining the Big 12 in 2023, UCF is the only ex-American Conference member that remains stuck at the bottom of the league. Given that the entire theory of UCF as a Big 12 member was based on proximity to Florida talent, it's a massive disappointment. Pittsburgh is not an easy non-conference opponent, but it's hard to blame scheduling for such poor production when the last time the Panthers held a team to a touchdown or less was Nov. 12, 2022, against a Virginia team that won just three games. Both Frost and athletic director Terry Mohajir are going to face tough questions, and rightfully so, if there are no signs of a turnaround soon.
Group of Six: This weekend at Air Force was built around honoring Fisher DeBerry, the 88-year-old College Football Hall of Fame coach whose remarkable 23-year run included three conference titles and 17 winning seasons. The Academy even unveiled a new statue of DeBerry, posing as he signaled a touchdown, that will forever stand outside Falcon Stadium. So it was deeply unfortunate that the current iteration of Air Force football could not meet that moment, losing 38-32 to North Dakota State. What was the administration there thinking in the first place? Scheduling North Dakota State, the FCS' best program over the last 15 years, is just asking to be embarrassed. But after two straight losing seasons under Troy Calhoun, Air Force fans got reminded Saturday that the days of DeBerry regularly guiding the Falcons into the top 25 are receding further and further into the past.
Headset Misery
Ryan Day: Think about this strange little trivia nugget. Dating back to last season's Big Ten championship game, Ohio State has lost three straight games to power conference opponents. OK, it's not like they're losing to bums — Indiana, Miami and Texas are among the most talented and successful programs in college football — but it's not a trend Ohio State fans want to see. Day's national championship in 2024, which got him off the hot seat, will only buy so much goodwill. And the way Ohio State lost to the Longhorns, blowing a 23-3 lead and giving up 21 straight points in the fourth quarter, will highlight some really conservative playcalling down the stretch. (Even with an excellent kicker, settling for a 45-yarder with 4:16 to go that would have probably clinched victory seemed an odd choice.) After doing nearly anything it wanted for three quarters, Ohio State came up empty on its last four drives. That's a bad look for Day and Arthur Smith, the ex-NFL coach who now coordinates that unit.
Lane Kiffin: In the long and winding saga of Kiffin's career, he's never had a stretch like this one. Last Saturday, he was on top of the world after destroying Clemson. By mid-week, LSU was facing threats of expulsion from the SEC. And now, he will have to get ready for the most emotionally fraught game of his career at Ole Miss. Even for a coach who does not particularly care about distractions, it's a lot. And perhaps it showed up in LSU's 45-14 victory over Louisiana Tech that only broke open in the fourth quarter. Though there was never any real danger of LSU losing, the game was 10-7 at halftime and stayed within a one-score margin until late in the third quarter. That was surprising given how talented LSU looked just a week ago. The biggest blemish? Sam Leavitt, the transfer quarterback from Arizona State, threw three interceptions including a pick 6. Was this a classic letdown spot for LSU or is there cause for concern heading into a game where Kiffin will face a week of nothing but distractions? Stay tuned.
Dan Mullen: A year ago, as he was leading UNLV to a feel-good 10-4 record, he was adamant that he was going to stay in Las Vegas rather than jump right back into a power conference job. After three years away from the sideline, he was content to run it back and see if he could get the Rebels to the College Football Playoff. But many around UNLV expected that Mullen would move on after this year because he'd have a good team again and would get an opportunity he couldn't pass up. But after seeing UNLV for three games, it's worth asking whether everyone had it wrong. UNLV has already played two G6 programs with similar resources and lost to both of them — 27-21 at home to Memphis and most recently 44-6 at North Texas. UNLV may still end up being competitive in the depleted Mountain West, but banking on Oklahoma/Auburn transfer Jackson Arnold at quarterback has not worked out very well thus far. At this rate, Mullen may end up back in Vegas for Year 3 — and not necessarily by choice.
Greg Schiano: We have already reached the point where Rutgers' 10 remaining games are only useful as a referendum on whether he deserves an eighth season in 2027. After a 28-21 loss to Boston College, which followed a season-opening disaster against UMass, the conversation is warranted. Though Schiano acknowledged that the state of affairs is unacceptable, much of his postgame press conference focused on the future. "We're just not quite ready yet, but the key word is yet," he told reporters. Yet? How much time does it take you as a Big Ten program to be good enough to beat teams that were a combined 2-22 last season? Schiano is only 60 years old, but his success was so long ago that he seems to be completely from a different era. The theory that he'd come back for a second try at Rutgers and get the program on solid ground before retirement has now turned into a conversation about how expensive it will be to move on from the most successful coach in school history.
Moments of misery
Texas' expensive butterfingers: Few people know exactly how much money Texas is paying its receiver tandem of Cam Coleman and Ryan Wingo, but some reports have pegged Coleman at $3 million after transferring from Auburn and Wingo somewhere in the $1 million range. For that kind of investment at wide receiver, you should not have to watch Texas and wonder if Arch Manning has enough help in the passing game. That thought came to mind, however, after both Coleman and Wingo dropped sure touchdowns in the early stages of the Longhorns' 24-23 win over Ohio State. Though it all worked out in the end for Texas, those two plays would have loomed very large had Manning not engineered a furious fourth-quarter comeback. As Texas moves forward, those expensive receivers are going to find themselves wide open quite often. They need to catch the ball when Manning delivers it to them if they're going to have a CFP-worthy season.
Kansas' inappropriate history lesson: Very old college football rivalries have complicated origins, and the backstory of Missouri and Kansas hating each other literally predates the Civil War. But Kansas' decision to lean into that theme this week before their football game — a hype video on social media painted it as a clash of "right vs. wrong" and "heroes vs. villains" while exploring that history — felt bizarrely low rent. Yes, Kansas (the free state) was on the right side and Missouri (the slave state) was not. But to suggest such a tragic era in America has anything to do with a football game played in 2026 was bizarre and embarrassing. There are any number of legitimate reasons to have animus toward your biggest rival. But to tacitly paint them as Confederate sympathizers crossed a line and rightfully touched a nerve with Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz, who admitted trying to run up the score at the end of a 38-21 victory. "It's a football game … it's not any deeper," he said. Drinkwitz is right. Let's enjoy these rivalries without making them (too) personal.
Bob-bing for fans at UCLA: The arrival of Bob Chesney has supposedly re-energized the UCLA fan base, but images of the Rose Bowl crowd for his home opener against San Diego State highlighted the same problem the Bruins have had for a long time. The stadium is just too darn big for them. Even with what local media members were calling a better showing by the fans than what they've had in recent years, sections behind the visiting (less shaded) sideline were pretty sparse. Tarps covering the upper parts of both end zone seating areas are still there, too. Official attendance was announced at 31,973, which would provide a nice atmosphere If UCLA played in an appropriately sized stadium. But because they don't, it's hard to imagine how successful Chesney would have to be for the Rose Bowl to look full on a regular basis.
Indiana's scheduling scam: We all know by now that Curt Cignetti does not want to schedule tough non-conference games. It's a shame, truly, given what he's turned that program into. And certainly nobody at Indiana is going to criticize him for dumbing down the schedule if they're not going to be penalized for it by the College Football Playoff committee. However, it is simply beneath a national championship team to open the season with games against North Texas, Howard and Western Kentucky. What was the point of Saturday's 55-0 win over Howard, an FCS program that hasn't had a winning season since 2017? Why waste everyone's time? Sure, lots of programs (including many in the SEC) play an FCS game. It is what it is. But when you're not going to challenge yourself even a little bit in non-conference, it needs to be called out. Indiana has progressed to the point where it doesn't need these games anymore. Stop taking the easy way out, Cig.
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