Oklahoma thinks they've found another gem at LB with portal addition

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The Oklahoma Sooners made it to the College Football Playoff last season on the shoulders of an excellent defense built by head coach Brent Venables. In four seasons, Venables took the OU defense from a regular cellar-dweller in the Big 12 to a physically imposing unit in the SEC, which is no small task.

Part of what has made the Sooners so good defensively the past couple of years is the inside linebacker room, a position group that Venables has decades of experience working with. Last season, OU had four really good players that they could rotate through at the two spots in Kip Lewis, Owen Heinecke, Sammy Omosigho, and Kobie McKinzie. Whenever he needed to, Venables could switch between those four players and still have an effective second level of the defense.

However, the inside linebacker position will look far different this season. Lewis’ return is an enormous win for the Sooners, but both Omosigho (UCLA) and McKinzie (Northwestern) hit the transfer portal this winter and ended up in the Big Ten. While Heinecke still has a chance to return to college, as he’s fighting the NCAA in court to be awarded an extra year of eligibility with a temporary injunction, Oklahoma needed to make a big splash in the transfer portal and find another starter alongside Lewis in the case that Heinecke is not permitted to stay in school.

So, the Sooners targeted former Michigan linebacker Cole Sullivan, who registered 44 total tackles, five TFLs, two sacks, three interceptions, one forced fumble, and one fumble recovery in 2025 for the Wolverines. Unlike most portal additions, he’s only played two seasons of college ball, meaning he’s got a bright future at OU, even after 2026.

However, with stats like that and the pedigree of playing at a school like Michigan, there were plenty of other programs who wanted Sullivan to play for them. However, the linebacker said that it was a pitch from Venables, the self-proclaimed “linebacker doctor”, that got him to come to Norman.

“I just got that feeling on the back of my neck; the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I was just feeling like this is a guy I really want to play for,” Sullivan said. “It just got me really excited. My first conversation with him was just over the phone, so it got me really excited to come on a visit and learn more about Oklahoma.”

Venables has coached some of the best linebackers in all of college football during his career, and now he believes he’s found another gem in Sullivan, who brings great size (6-foot-4, 230 pounds) and tenacity to the position. With Lewis entrenched at the weakside linebacker spot, Sullivan will need to learn Venables’ defense quickly at middle linebacker, so that he can call the plays on the field for the Sooners.

Arguably no coach in the country knows what he’s looking for at linebacker better than Venables, so when he believes in a player as strongly as he does in Sullivan, it’s usually a pretty good bet that that player will turn out to be something special. It sounds like Venables’ pitch to Sullivan was pretty simple: ‘If you want to improve as a linebacker, come to OU and get coached up by me and my staff.’

The Sooners are thin at linebacker heading into the season, so they are counting on Sullivan to get acclimated quickly, and be a plug-and-play starter right away, especially if Heinecke can’t come back. Sullivan was the only LB that Oklahoma added via the portal, so there’s a good deal of pressure on him to come in and star right away. However, he’s already impressed his new teammates, who think he’ll be able to do the job he was brought to OU do to.

“He’s got good experience, he’s played a lot of ball, and he’s actually pretty young too, which is kind of surprising,” Oklahoma defensive lineman Taylor Wein told the media. “He’s a freak athlete. You see him, he’s so long. He’s going to be a big addition to our defense and help us win.”

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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Brent Venables’ pitch helped OU land an impact portal linebacker

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