BIG 12 CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYS

July 14, 2022

Brent Venables

Oklahoma Sooners

Press Conference

BRENT VENABLES: Good morning. Good to see everybody. Welcome to Arlington. It's great to be here. I'm really honored and proud to be here as the head coach representing the University of Oklahoma, our football players, our coaches and their families and certainly our administration. What an honor it is to sit here in front of y'all today.

I'd also like to congratulate and recognize our players, too, that have earned the right to be here today: Dillon Gabriel, quarterback; Marvin Mims, our wide receiver; Ethan Downs in defensive end; Woodi Washington, one of our cornerbacks; and Justin Broyles, one of our defensive backs as well as a Big 12 champion. Congratulations to Justin.

I'm just thankful to be here. As y'all know, I'm the new head coach at Oklahoma, but I'm not new to Oklahoma. This will be my 14th year at the university. Certainly a different capacity, but I couldn't be more thrilled and excited about the opportunity that I have in front of me.

Before I get to just what the last seven months have been like, and y'all will have plenty of questions for me, I would just like to throw out some statistics here because I know this will answer a few of your questions, what we've been working through the last several months starting in December.

This year, this version of the Oklahoma Sooners 2022 Team 128 will comprise 40 percent of our roster will have never put on a Sooner jersey in a game before until this fall. So 33 scholarship players and 15 walk-ons, 15 of those guys, two of them were walk-ons and 13 scholarship are the transfers.

But with those, we have 243 starts out of those 15 transfers, 444 games played, because I know a lot will be and has been made of how much we lost on both sides of the ball from a production standpoint.

Jeffery Johnson has 44 career starts; Dillon Gabriel, 35 career starts; Trey Morrison, 44 career starts; Kyle Ergenbright, 34 career starts; McKade Mettauer, 28; Jonah Laulu, 18; and our tight end, Parker, 25 career starts.

I've got six back on offense. We've got six back on defense. Got Michael Turk in our punt returner and Marvin Mims and Eric Gray is our kick returner coming back.

And then just breaking down the roster another step further, it's virtually 50 percent of our roster is juniors and seniors, 50 percent are freshman and sophomores. We'll have 13 graduates, as well, as we kick off the 2022 season.

As y'all can imagine, the last seven and a half months there's been a lot going on in Norman, Oklahoma. You only get one opportunity, one chance to be a first-time head coach and to do things right the first time.

We've been very patient and have tried to nurture through the process foundationally of building our program the right way, through relationships, through accountability, through structure, through discipline, and certainly there's been a lot of things from recruiting, building a staff, doing some new things from a facilities standpoint, transitioning from being an assistant to a head coach.

Every day there's something new, as y'all know, whether if you just take yourself back to those moments when you went from elementary school to middle school, or you went from middle school to high school and the transition and all the things you learn.

Sometimes you've just got to go through it. When you went from being single to being married, when you went from not having any children to having children, and you kind of learn as you go.

That's what the last seven and a half months have been like for me. I feel very prepared for this moment. I've been very fortunate that I've been associated and been a part of programs where to me there's three Hall of Fame coaches that have influenced me in Bill Snyder at Kansas State, Bob Stoops at Oklahoma, and I know without question that he will be a Hall of Fame coach in Dabo Swinney at Clemson.

I've been really fortunate to be around a lot of great people, tremendous football players that have helped me get here to this moment, and I couldn't be more excited.

It's been just like you would expect, the fire hose is fully inserted in my mouth here, and we've been blowing and going.

I'm really excited to get back with the team now as summer is coming to a close and we're getting ready to start up fall camp here August 4th, but having an opportunity to be around the players all summer, and what I love about this game that I'm associated with is the true transformation both inside and out that happens on these young guys' journey.

I'm blessed beyond what I deserve to be a part of those journeys, but I'll open it up for questions.

Q. Last time Oklahoma hired a head coach from outside the program, you were part of that staff with Bob Stoops. You guys brought in a transfer quarterback in Josh Heupel. We saw what he did for the program. Now with you guys bringing Dillon in, what does he need to do for your team this season?

BRENT VENABLES: Well, that's a great question. There are certainly parallels in many ways, bringing in an experienced lefty in our first year. But to me it goes back just to the people. You've got to be good enough. Dillon Gabriel is a winner. You can't say it any better than that. He's thrown for 8,000 yards, completed over 60 percent of his passes, incredible touchdown-to-interception ratio, just a great leader.

He's our quarterback. Certainly anything can happen as we move forward through fall camp. It's always about daily competition. But I feel great I can lay my head down at night knowing not just what he has done on the football field but the quality of the person he is.

He's about all the right stuff. He's dependable. He's reliable. He's accountable. He's humble. He's one of the hardest workers, shows up early. He's last one to leave. Always working to improve. And he leads by example, and guys follow him. He's a galvanizer of people.

Q. I just wanted to ask you real quick with all of the losses and additions via the transfer portal, who has really stepped up and embraced a leadership role for this team?

BRENT VENABLES: I've got five of them with me here today. So I won't go through each and every one of them today, but I've been most excited about -- I can go through a laundry list of more players, and it was kind of a struggle to figure out who's earned the right, because I'm limited in the number of guys I can bring.

It's really been a team effort from a leadership standpoint. There's been buy-in at every position on both sides of the ball. I would be remiss if I just named a few guys.

And certainly the five guys that are here today have earned the right as leaders, as guys that have invested, as guys that have been about it. I talk about be about it, quit talking about it. I want guys that are going to be about it. I'm looking for doers, not takers.

And these guys here today represent a great locker room of a bunch of great leaders.

Q. I wanted to ask you about your coaching career. There's been a lot of schools over the years that have been interested in hiring you as a head coach. You've turned them all down. What was it about the University of Oklahoma that made you decide to come back and be a head coach?

BRENT VENABLES: Again, great question. I learned a long time ago from Bill Snyder, the grass isn't greener, and I always believed that. He said it, and I believed it. I wrote it down, and that was in my Coaching Bible 101.

I was a baby of three boys in my own family, and I learned from my older brothers' mistakes, if you will, and I tried to do the same thing as a young coach to -- I never learned how to be great in two places at one time. And to be great as a football player, you've got to have your feet underneath your hips. You can't have your feet way out here outside of your shoulder pads. And to be great in any profession, I believe wholeheartedly you try to be great right where you're at.

I've just been a very loyal, patient person that tried to learn from others, but I think that also comes back to just trying to be very thankful and appreciative of the opportunities that I have. I'm loyal to my players, loyal to the colleagues, loyal to the people that have believed in me, and that has served me well through my career.

Countless opportunities to evaluate new opportunities, but there's only -- this was a very special opportunity for me. Oklahoma has been near and dear to my heart. I left in a very emotional state when I left Kansas State to come to Oklahoma, but my last words to Coach Snyder, as I was still learning and I had a ton of growth ahead of me, and as I told Coach Snyder, I wanted an opportunity to coach at a place like Oklahoma.

It's a special place. It's the winningest program in the modern era, the most championships, conference championships in the history of college football with 50, the only program since 2000 that has not had a losing season in the Power Five.

So winning is very hard. Being consistently at the top of your game is even harder. So Oklahoma has exemplified that both on the field and -- probably for me and my peace in making the decision -- off the field from a leadership standpoint, from an alignment standpoint. So whether that starts with Joe Harris, our president, who was the dean of the law school when I was there for those 13 years, or Joe Castiglione, who hired Bob Stoops, and I was a part of that initial staff back in 1999, and so many countless others, whether it's Larry Naifeh or Zac Selmon and so many people in the administration.

And then what Oklahoma has stood for. We're talking with the other players on the sprinter van over here just talking about success coming in here, and you've got some guys that are sophomores and some guys that are six-year seniors, and I wanted to hear their experiences here in Arlington.

I'm the only one that had a loss in this stadium, by the way, out of that group. So whether Marvin Mims went 4 or 5-0 as a high school player or beating Texas or Iowa State or Baylor, TCU, Florida, myself, I certainly -- we were 2-1, beat Nebraska and beat Notre Dame while I was at Clemson, and then of course we lost to BYU 14-13 in 2009 here. I think we're collectively not including the high school, give or take, 6 or 7-1 here.

I say that with all humility, that this place has a standard of excellence that takes a backseat to nobody. To have an opportunity to become the head coach at a place that is near and dear to my heart, where all four of my children were born here, I've been very invested in the community in Norman, in the university and that football program.

Still have great, great relationships. My life has all been about the people that I've been associated with, that have helped me along the way, Bob Stoops, Joe Castiglione, Larry Naifeh, certainly Joe Harris and so many amazing football players at Oklahoma. And certainly the other stops that I got there, but I've had so many of those former Oklahoma players that have helped me get to this moment.

I have 17 former players on my staff. So, again, I'm going to be about it. That's what I've always -- I've been a very connected person my whole life, and it's always about the people. The people always make the place, but Oklahoma is a special place, and so it was -- when everything got right and I knew that I was going to be supported the way that I feel like I needed to to be a successful head coach, it was a no-brainer. It was a slam dunk.

Q. Oklahoma seems to have lost its identity as a dominant defensive program with great offensive powerhouses. How hard is it going to be to restore that identity to Oklahoma, especially in a league as offensive as the Big 12?

BRENT VENABLES: Well, again, if you went to last year's press conference, wherever I did a press conference, or 10 years ago when I did a press conference, wherever I did a press conference, I'm going to really answer that the same way.

Do we have to establish some standards at Oklahoma? Our standards as an offensive and defensive staff, me as the head coach? Absolutely. That process took place from the moment I took the job.

You have to rehearse your beliefs. You have to rehearse what your values are. You have to rehearse what your standards are continuously as you nurture and develop a culture of excellence, a culture of great defense, what that looks like.

And then sometimes you've got to go through it to grow and improve. The improvement process sometimes -- for me personally, it never happens fast enough, ever. But I also have a very good perspective on what that's going to look like, both the highs and the lows of it.

So I think it's important that as we get into our inaugural season that we'll create a baseline and then we'll build from there.

It's not going to be what I just left at Clemson, but it wasn't that way when we got there in 2012, either, and you develop that through a lot of work, a lot of players believing in what you're doing. Certainly staff chemistry and cohesion is an incredible part of that.

It's really, once you start playing games, figuring out what your strengths and weaknesses are and then playing to those strengths, protecting your weaknesses and then developing and improving in those areas of weakness.

I have a very clear vision for what it looks like. We've worked really hard and diligently the last several months to show our players, coach them, teach them, allow them to see it on videotape of what it looks like. A picture is worth a thousand words, and so really how long that process will take, it'll never happen fast enough. I can assure you.

But what I love about this team is the hunger and the willingness to commit to what we've asked them to do. Like, they have answered the bell every step of the way.

Anybody that knows me will tell you, I'll call it exactly how it is, good, bad or indifferent. I've been incredibly pleased with the work that these guys have committed to, and the hunger and the awareness that they have, okay, here's where we are, this is where we need to get better.

Remember, now, you're dealing with a locker room that has won 78 games the last seven years, that have played in a bunch of playoffs, in a bunch of championship games. I think Oklahoma is, give or take, 13-1 in conference championship games, 2003 Kansas State was the last one and the only one.

This is a group and this is a locker room that's used to winning. Do we need to improve in every area? Absolutely. We've got to get better in every area. It's not just the defense. It's every single area for us to have the kind of program that we want to have, and that's discipline, that's tough, that's precise, that's explosive, that's uncommon effort. It's being relentless, playing with chemistry and unity and playing for the name across their jerseys.

We've got a lot of work to do. There's no question about it. But I think that our issues are first-world problems in the landscape of college football, but I'm not naive; I recognize better than anybody where we're at and what we've got to do to improve.

It's a process. You have to go through it. What I've learned I've learned from other people, from a scheme standpoint, and so it's not like you have these magical schemes.

But we all share in both the success and the failure. We've all been diligently putting calluses on those hands and working hard to develop an identity, and again, that'll continue to be established.

My expectation as we begin our year and a true measure of success, and I've got lots of ways to measure success, but one of the most important measures of success is, all right, where do we start August 4th and where do we end the last week of November? My expectation is improvement, better than when we started.

Some of it'll be incremental and some of it won't be noticeable to the naked eye, and then some of it hopefully it'll be incredibly transparent.

That's when you know that you're doing things the right way, that you're better at the end than when you started. It's pretty simple.

But you do that with a daily focus. You can't worry about some day if you don't focus on today. Literally, it's not a cliche and everything else, that's really -- young people have a hard time focusing, old people have a hard time focusing. It's a daily process for us. It's a daily focus of improvement. And our guys have bought into that, and that's what I love. There's an innocence about this locker room that I've really, really grown to love.

But the work, the commitment and the hunger as well as the self-awareness, and it's one thing -- because nothing is more, for me as a coach, more discouraging than somebody that doesn't want to be coached, somebody that thinks they have it all figured out or somebody that has an overinflated opinion of themselves.

We have a lot of humility, a lot of toughness, a lot of hunger in that locker room. So that gives you, from a foundation standpoint, a reason to believe that, all right, that's where it all starts, it's attitude, it's mindset to get it started in the right direction.