Brent Venables' persistence paid off with a CFP berth

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The Oklahoma Sooners are officially headed to the 2025 College Football Playoff, as they landed at No. 8 in the CFP committee’s final rankings on Selection Sunday. OU was idle on conference championship weekend, after a 10-2 overall regular season that included a 6-2 record in the SEC.

Oklahoma will host a rematch against the Alabama Crimson Tide, who were ranked as the No. 9 seed. That game will take place in Norman on Friday, December 19th at 7:00 p.m. CT and it will be broadcast on ABC and ESPN. The Sooners beat Alabama on the road on November 15th by a score of 23-21, and the Crimson Tide remained in the ninth spot, despite losing to Georgia on Saturday in the SEC Championship Game by a score of 28-7. Although the Tide were thoroughly outplayed by the Dawgs, they were not punished in any way by the committee, and stayed at ninth in the rankings, ahead of both Miami and Notre Dame. Therefore, the Sooners have to beat a team twice in one year if they want their season to continue.

Indiana, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas Tech were the top four teams in the committee’s rankings, and will all receive byes in the second year of the 12-team playoff. Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Oklahoma will all be hosting first-round games, while Alabama, Miami, Tulane and James Madison will hit the road in Round 1. The James Madison-Oregon winner will play Texas Tech in the Orange Bowl, the Tulane-Ole Miss winner will play Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, the Miami-Texas A&M winner will play Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl, and the Alabama-Oklahoma winner will play Indiana in the Rose Bowl.

Notre Dame ended up being the team left out at No. 11, after the committee was in a no-win situation of only being able to pick two of Alabama, Miami and Notre Dame to make the playoff.

There will be plenty of time over the next two weeks to compare the Sooners and the Crimson Tide, and analyze this rematch under the Friday night lights. However, this moment belongs to OU’s fourth-year head coach Brent Venables, who did what many believed he wasn’t capable of doing.

Venables’ college football life began as a linebacker at Garden City Community College in 1989 and 1990, and then at Kansas State, where he played linebacker for the legendary Bill Snyder in 1991 and 1992. Upon graduating, he coached as a graduate assistant from 1993 to 1995, and then was KSU’s linebackers coach from 1996 to 1998.

While at Kansas State, Venables played for and then coached under co-defensive coordinator Bob Stoops from 1991 to 1995, before Stoops left for the defensive coordinator job at Florida, where he served under Steve Spurrier from 1996 to 1998. When new Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione hired Stoops to be OU’s head coach ahead of the 1999 season, Stoops hired Venables away from KSU to be his co-DC and linebackers coach. Venables would serve alongside Bob’s brother Mike Stoops (whom Venables worked under at K-State from 1993 to 1998) to make the Sooners fearsome on the defensive side of the ball.

That trio made Oklahoma’s defense a force to be reckoned with, and by Year 2 in 2000, the Sooners were undefeated, undisputed national champions. With Mike calling the defensive plays, that arrangement lasted from 1999 to 2003, when Mike left to become the head coach at Arizona. Venables became the sole defensive coordinator and he called the defensive plays from 2004 to 2011 in Norman.

However, with the offensive boon in the Big 12 beginning in the late-2000s and early 2010s, the Oklahoma defense slipped a little from their dominant ways in the early to mid-2000s. When Mike was fired at Arizona, Bob decided to bring him back on as co-defensive coordinator to work alongside Venables after the 2011 season. Venables decided to take take the open DC role at Clemson, making a very difficult decision to leave the place he’d worked for the past 13 years. The allure of getting to call his own defense with the Tigers was enough to get him to head east.

Venables watched from afar, as Mike couldn’t re-create the defensive magic in Norman from the good-old days, and the Sooners were often lacking defensively from 2012 on. He watched from afar as Bob retired ahead of the 2017 season and gave the keys to the program to offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley. He watched from afar as Riley fired Mike midway through the 2018 season, due to a total collapse on defense over the past couple of years. Oklahoma had plenty of success in the 10 years Venables was gone, but so much of it came because of the offense. The Sooners made four playoff appearances (2015, 2017, 2018, 2019), but could never get past the semifinal round.

Meanwhile, Venables helped build something incredibly special at Clemson from 2012 to 2021. The Tigers slowly bu surely became one of the best programs in college football, winning national titles in 2016 and 2018. Clemson also played for a title in both 2015 and 2019 and made the CFP field in 2017 and 2020. Venables’ defense was a big reason why, and he became commonly known as one of the best defensive minds in college football. He turned down a few head coaching offers to stay in Clemson.

However, when Riley shockingly left in the middle of the night to become the head coach at USC, stunning Sooner Nation and making himself a target of criticism from the fanbase in the process, it was time for Venables to come home. A week after Riley’s defection, Venables touched down in Norman as the 23rd full-time head coach of the Sooners on December 5th, 2021. He was tasked with leading the program into the SEC and having sustained, high-level success there. Four years and two days later, he’s taken the program back to the CFP for the first time since 2019, but the road has been long and bumpy.

In 2022, Venables walked into a post-Riley rebuild that resulted in a 6-7 season. As he tried to establish his culture and identity, he just didn’t have enough of his players in place, especially on defense.

In 2023, Oklahoma rebounded to a 10-3 season in the program’s final year in the Big 12. However, key losses on the road to Kansas and Oklahoma State kept the Sooners out of the conference title game and out of the CFP. Despite that, it looked like things were heading in the right direction after just two years of Venables’ tenure.

In 2024, the wheels almost fell off, as the Sooners sunk to 6-7 again in the first SEC season. A defense that had been steadily improving was finally looking the part, but the offense fell off a cliff and gave Oklahoma basically no chance to win. The frustrating losses piled up, and Venables was firmly on the hot seat entering Year 4. The Sooners just didn’t look like they had what it took anymore, and the expectations for this fall were low.

Through it all, Venables did what he knew. He was persistent. He worked hard. He didn’t waver. He did what he knew was right, even when it was the hard way or the long way. He built an identity and a culture, even when the losses kept coming. He heard the criticism and vowed to be better.

Just 12 months after a six-win season, Venables has the Sooners as a host team in the playoff at 10 wins (and counting). Oklahoma is a flawed team, primarily on offense, but they’ve been hard to kill this season, and they’ve taken on the identity of their head coach. It’s not perfect, it’s not pretty, but Oklahoma wins games in gritty, grimy fashion.

Venables and Oklahoma also beat Riley and USC to the playoff, as the Trojans have yet to make the field, despite poaching their head coach away from the Sooners. Despite a pretty significant head start, a Heisman Trophy winner, an influx of transfer portal talent and an easier schedule, Riley’s Trojans couldn’t win the four-year race to the CFP. Instead it was a first-time head coach in Venables getting there first, despite recruiting players to little old Norman, Oklahoma instead of LA, and despite living in the lion’s den of the SEC, the league Riley ran scared from. Few, if any, saw the Sooners ending up where they are today.

The 2025 season has been a statement-making one for the Sooners, and Venables’ statement has been that he belongs as the head coach in Norman. With questions and discussions surrounding him after the disappointment of last year, Venables has proven the doubters wrong, and his team has done the same this season. Brent Venables’ persistence and his hard work have paid off, and Oklahoma has earned its spot in the College Football Playoff.

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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Brent Venables and the Sooners are playoff-bound in 2025

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